BEIRUT, New York Times, March 6, 2018 — The U.N. says Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is urging all parties in Syria to implement a cease-fire demanded by the Security Council on Feb. 24.
The U.N. chief also is very concerned over attacks throughout the besieged Damascus suburbs of eastern Ghouta.
U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said late Tuesday that attacks in eastern Ghouta reportedly killed more than 100 people Monday.
Dujarric says 14 of 46 trucks in a convoy trying to deliver supplies to Douma in eastern Ghouta weren’t able to fully unload Monday.
He says that “nearly half of the food carried on the convoy” could not be delivered. He also says that “a part of the medical and health supplies to be included for delivery was removed by the Syrian authorities.”
Dujarric says Guterres is calling for “safe and unimpeded access” for convoys to deliver aid to hundreds of thousands of Syrians in desperate need.
France says the U.N. Security Council will meet Wednesday to discuss the failure to implement its Feb. 24 resolution demanding a cease-fire “without delay” in Syria.
The truce was supposed to last for at least 30 days in order to allow for the delivery of humanitarian aid and the evacuation of critically ill and wounded people from besieged areas.
France and Britain requested the closed-door briefings by U.N. humanitarian chief Mark Lowcock and U.N. special envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura.
Last Wednesday, Russia and Syria clashed with the U.S. and its Western allies over responsibility for the failure of a cease-fire to take hold in Syria.
Since then, a humanitarian convoy reached the besieged eastern suburbs of Damascus on Monday, but the International Committee for the Red Cross said it was forced to halt the aid delivery after the security situation deteriorated while aid workers were on the ground.
An official with the International Committee for the Red Cross says aid workers who were on a humanitarian mission inside eastern Ghouta saw rescuers trying to pull corpses from the rubble of buildings.
Pawel Krzysiek, head of communications at ICRC Syria, says the situation in the opposition-held Damascus suburb is “desperate.”
Speaking on Tuesday, a day after a rare humanitarian mission to eastern Ghouta that was cut short because of the shelling, he says schools have stopped and some children have not seen daylight for 15 days. Many residents are hungry.
“We left with heavy hearts,” Krzysiek said in a video distributed by the ICRC.
He appealed for a sustainable solution to the security situation in eastern Ghouta so that more aid could be brought in
U.N. war crimes investigators say a Russian plane was apparently behind a deadly airstrike in November in Syria’s Idlib province that killed 84 people at a marketplace, an attack which could amount to a war crime.
The findings were reported by the U.N.’s Commission of Inquiry on Syria on Tuesday.
It’s the first time the commission has pinned responsibility for civilian deaths in Syria on Russia. The report says “all available information” indicates a Russian plane carried out the Nov. 13 airstrike that hit a market, surrounding houses and a police station run by Western-backed Syrian rebels in the town of Atarib, in northern Idlib.
At least 84 people were killed and about another 150 were wounded in the attack.
The commission, which was created 6-1/2 years ago to document alleged human rights violations by any side in Syria’s war, says the plane that carried out the airstrike took off from an air base in Syria run by Russian forces, the Hemeimeem air base.
A war-monitoring group says Syrian government shelling and airstrikes killed 80 people in the besieged eastern suburbs of Damascus the previous day, making it the deadliest day there since the U.N.’s Security Council last month demanded a cease-fire across Syria.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says 80 died and dozens more were wounded on Monday as government forces ignored the U.N. call and pressed their assault on the rebel-held eastern Ghouta.
The United Nations estimates 400,000 people are trapped under a government siege in the area.
