In defiance of the international community, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad declared that military operations in the rebel-held enclave of Eastern Ghouta would continue as the bombardment of the area moves into its third week.
“The operation in Ghouta is a continuation of combating terrorism in different places,” Assad said in comments to local journalists that were broadcast on Syrian state television Sunday.
“There is no contradiction between the truce and combat operations,” the Syrian President said, referring to a five-hour daily ceasefire ordered by Russian President Vladimir Putin last Monday that was meant to open a humanitarian corridor for traumatized civilians to leave.
“The progress achieved yesterday and the day before in Ghouta by the Syrian Arab Army was made during this truce,” Assad said.
In major turning point for the offensive, the Syrian regime had taken control of several villages in Eastern Ghouta, according to Syrian state-run news agency SANA.
SANA reported that villages once controlled by Al-Qaeda affiliate Al-Nusra were now under the regime’s authority. It also said that the rebel group had fired over 300 mortar shells and rockets on neighboring Damascus, killing and injuring scores of civilians.
It is the first time the Syrian regime has announced territorial control of parts of Eastern Ghouta since launching the offensive on the rebel-held enclave on February 18.
Assad said that operations would continue, while “opening the way for civilians to leave.”
‘Catastrophic’ situation
Thousands of residents have fled their homes in Eastern Ghouta and headed westward where the fighting is less severe, civilians inside the suburb told CNN on Sunday.
“The situation on the ground is catastrophic,” surgeon Hamza Hassan, based in Irbin in Eastern Ghouta, told CNN via WhatsApp. “There is massive internal displacement of 30,000 people from (the areas of) Beit Sawa, Otaya, the Douma villages,” he said.
A 45-truck convoy with enough supplies for 90,000 people in 10 locations is on standby to deliver aid to parts of the war-torn enclave.
It hasn’t been able to enter the area to date but in a statement Sunday the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said it hoped to deliver aid on Monday.
“We hope that the convoy may proceed as planned and will be followed by other convoys,” said Ali Al-Za’tari, the UN’s Syria Humanitarian Coordinator. “Our teams on the ground are ready to do all that is needed to make this happen.”
‘Lies and indiscriminate force’
Shortly after Assad’s comments, the White House released a statement condemning the violence and accusing the Russian and Syrian regimes of targeting civilians “as part of a brutal campaign.”
“This is the same combination of lies and indiscriminate force that Russia and the Syrian regime used to isolate and destroy Aleppo in 2016, where thousands of civilians were killed,” the statement said.
The White House also accused Russia of going on “to ignore its terms and to kill civilians under the false auspices of counterterrorism operations.”
Russia had unilaterally declared its own “humanitarian pause” in fighting in Syria last week, after the UN Security Council had passed its resolution for a cease fire. But neither the UN’s order, nor Russia’s, produced a respite for people on the ground. Both said a cessation of hostilities wouldn’t apply to terrorist groups, although the UN and Russia [and Syria] diverge on the parties they consider to be terrorists in the conflict.
The main rebel units actively holding territory in Eastern Ghouta are the Islamist Jaish al-Islam and Faylaq al Rahman, which have taken part in peace negotiations in the past. According to activists, there are small pockets of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, an al-Qaeda affiliate, still in the area.
In a Sunday phone call, US President Donald Trump spoke with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi, in which the two leaders “discussed Russia and Iran’s irresponsible support of the Assad regime,” the White House said in a statement. They “agreed to work together on ending the humanitarian crisis in Syria and achieving Arab unity and security in the region.”
Other world leaders were also employing diplomacy to try to urge for calm. French President Emanuel Macron asked his Iranian counterpart Hassan Rouhani to put pressure on the Syrian regime to end its attacks and to allow humanitarian aid to enter Eastern Ghouta, according to a statement released by the Elysee Palace. Macron and Rouhani “affirmed their agreement to work together” to get aid to the civilians who need it in the coming days, the statement said.
Why Eastern Ghouta?
In the week since the UN’s ceasefire resolution, to only had the violence failed to stop, it has actually escalated, according to Panos Moumtzis, UN Regional Coordinator for the Syria Crisis. “Instead of a much-needed reprieve, we continue to see more fighting, more death, and more disturbing reports of hunger and hospitals being bombed,” Moumtzis said in a statement on Sunday. “This collective punishment of civilians is simply unacceptable,” he said.
Almost 600 people are believed to have been killed and over 2,000 injured since Syrian government forces launched an air and ground offensive on Eastern Ghouta on February 18, according to the statement.
Medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) put the civilian death toll even higher Saturday, reporting that 770 had been killed and more than 4,000 wounded just between February 18 and February 27. At the same time, ground-based strikes and mortar shelling from Eastern Ghouta have killed and injured scores of civilians in neighboring Damascus.
Eastern Ghouta is one of the last major rebel-held enclaves in the country, which has been ravaged by war for almost seven years.
Observers fear the area could face a fate similar to that which befell eastern Aleppo, which was all but destroyed in a government offensive in December 2016.
The regime’s capture of that city marked a turning point in the war, with President Assad taking back control of all four major cities in the country with the help of Russia.
Russia’s intervention in 2015 with troops and weaponry has helped tilt the balance in Assad’s favor, making the push for Eastern Ghouta more intense now than ever.