President Donald Trump and Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley during a high-level meeting on UN reform convened by the US, Sept. 18, 2017. Photo: UN / Mark Garten.
US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley warned on Monday that Washington “remains prepared to act if we must,” if the UN Security Council fails to act on Syria, as the Syrian army’s onslaught in eastern Ghouta continued unabated.
The US asked the Security Council to demand an immediate 30-day ceasefire in Damascus and rebel-held eastern Ghouta, where Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces, backed by Russia and Iran, say they are targeting “terrorist” groups which are shelling the capital.
The army’s onslaught in eastern Ghouta, backed by air and artillery strikes, has killed about 1,160 people since Feb. 18, a war monitor said, as Assad seeks to crush the last big rebel stronghold near the capital Damascus.
The US bombed a Syrian government air base last year over a deadly chemical weapons attack.
The Security Council demanded a 30-day ceasefire across Syria in a unanimously adopted Feb. 24 resolution.
Russia and Damascus say a ceasefire ordered by the UN Security Council does not protect the fighters in eastern Ghouta, arguing that they are members of banned terrorist groups.
“No sieges have been lifted … To our knowledge, not one critically sick or wounded person has yet been evacuated.
The assault on Ghouta is one of the heaviest in the war, which enters its eighth year this week.
Thousands of families are sleeping in the open in the streets of the biggest town in the enclave, where there is no longer any room in packed cellars to shelter from government bombardment, local authorities said.
At least 70 people had been buried in a town park because air strikes made it unsafe to reach the cemetery on the outskirts, it said.
Douma residents said dozens of people were trapped alive under rubble, with rescuers unable to reach them due to the intensity of the raids.
Government forces have now captured more than half the rebel enclave, entirely besieging Douma and the large town of Harasta, cutting them off from each other and neighbouring areas with advances on Saturday and Sunday.
In an apparent sign of local discontent with the rebel policy of holding out, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group reported that hundreds of people protested in the town of Kafr Batna to demand a deal to end the onslaught.
Shots were fired at the crowd by unknown people and one person was killed, it said. The spokesman for Failaq al-Rahman, the main rebel group there, was not immediately available for comment.
Jaish al-Islam, one of eastern Ghouta’s main rebel groups, said on Monday it had reached an agreement with the government’s ally Russia to evacuate wounded people, after communicating with Moscow through the UN.
A UN humanitarian spokeswoman said the United Nations was not part of that deal and still called for the urgent evacuation of more than 1,000 sick and wounded people in eastern Ghouta.
State television broadcasts from the government-controlled side of the battlefront showed dark grey clouds of smoke billowing from several places across a landscape of shattered buildings. A minaret had lost a chunk from one side of its slender tower. In the background, heavy vehicles could be heard rumbling past and the deep crump of explosions echoed around.
The Observatory, said on Monday the death toll in the civil war had passed half a million people.
It has confirmed the deaths of 511,000 people, it said, and has the names of more than 350,000 of them. About 85 percent were killed by government forces and their allies, it said.
Eastern Ghouta has been besieged for years after many of its residents joined the initial protests against Assad’s rule in 2011 that triggered the slide into civil war. The United Nations says 400,000 people live in the enclave, already suffering shortages of food and medicine even before the massive assault began in mid-February.
Assad says the assault on eastern Ghouta is needed to end the rule of Islamist insurgents over the civilian population and to stop mortar fire on nearby Damascus.
The United Nations has warned of dire shortages of food and medicine, where international deliveries have long been erratic and often obstructed before they could reach the enclave.
The expulsion of the rebels from eastern Ghouta would represent their biggest defeat since they lost their enclave in Aleppo in December 2016. They still control large areas in the northwest and southwest and a few scattered pockets elsewhere but have been driven from most major population centres.
Syrian jets also struck rebel-held towns in the country’s south, the first aerial attacks on the area since the United States and Russia brokered a deal making it a “de-escalation zone” last year, rebels and residents said.