This photo released on Tuesday Feb. 20, 2018 provided by the Syrian anti-government activist group Ghouta Media Center, which has been authenticated based on its contents and other AP reporting, shows... (Associated Press) 
 
 This photo released on Tuesday Feb. 20, 2018 provided by the Syrian anti-government activist group Ghouta Media Center, which has been authenticated based on its contents and other AP reporting, shows an injured Syrian man who was wounded by the shelling of the Syrian government forces, waits to receive... (Associated Press) 
 
 BEIRUT (AP) — Intense Syrian government shelling and airstrikes of rebel-held Damascus suburbs killed at least 98 people in what was the deadliest day in the area in three years, a monitoring group and paramedics said Tuesday. 
 
 A day after Monday's government barrage, retaliatory shells rained down on the capital Damascus, killing at least one person on Tuesday. 
 
 The targeted suburbs — scattered across an area known as eastern Ghouta — have been subjected to weeks-long bombardment that has killed and wounded hundreds of people. Opposition activists say government forces have brought in more reinforcements in recent days, suggesting a major assault is imminent to recapture the area that is the last main rebel stronghold near Damascus. 
 
 Monday's bombardment that killed nearly 100 people saw the use of warplanes, helicopter gunships, missiles as well as artillery, in a major escalation of violence near President Bashar Assad's seat of power. 
 
 The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said it was the deadliest days in eastern Ghouta since 2015, adding that 20 children and 15 women were among those killed. 
 
 The opposition-affiliated Syrian Civil Defense, also known as White Helmets, said the shelling and airstrikes killed 98 and that some people are still under the rubble. It said the dead included one of the rescue group's members, Firas Jomaa. 
 
 Both the Observatory and the White Helmets reported more airstrikes and shelling on Tuesday in eastern Ghouta as rebels pounded Damascus with mortar shells. 
 
 Rebels retaliated by hitting some Damascus neighborhoods with mortar shells, killing one person and wounding six people, according to the state news agency SANA. On Tuesday morning, Damascus residents reported shelling on areas in central Damascus. 
 
 "Shells are falling like rain. We are hiding in the corridor," a Damascus resident told The Associated Press, asking that her name not be mentioned for her own safety. She spoke while hiding in the corridor of an office building. 
 
 Videos have surfaced from the eastern suburbs showing paramedics pulling out the injured from under the rubble while others are seen franticly digging through the debris in the dark, in search for survivors. 
 
 "The humanitarian situation of civilians in East Ghouta is spiraling out of control," said Panos Moumtzis, the U.N. regional humanitarian coordinator for the Syria crisis, in a statement late Monday. 
 
 "It's imperative to end this senseless human suffering now. Such targeting of innocent civilians and infrastructure must stop now," he said. 
 
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 Associated Press Writer Zeina Karam in Beirut contributed to this report. ||||| This photo release by the Syrian Red Crescent, shows members of the Syrian Red Crescent distributing medicines for civilians in Douma, eastern Ghouta, a suburb of Damascus, Syria, Monday, March. 5, 2018.... (Associated Press) 
 
 This photo release by the Syrian Red Crescent, shows members of the Syrian Red Crescent distributing medicines for civilians in Douma, eastern Ghouta, a suburb of Damascus, Syria, Monday, March. 5, 2018. Desperate for food and medicine, Syrian civilians in the war-ravaged eastern suburbs of Damascus... (Associated Press) 
 
 BEIRUT (AP) — A top U.N. aid official appealed to the Syrian government and its Russian backers for a cessation of hostilities in eastern Ghouta on Thursday when a second convoy with desperately needed aid was postponed after government forces split the enclave in two, creating an evolving, unpredictable situation on the ground. 
 
 Jan Egeland said it is "impossible" to deliver aid to the rebel-held eastern suburbs of Damascus amid the current fighting, which he described as the worst ever. 
 
 "I'm very worried for a repeat of very many of the bad things we saw in the final days of the battle of Aleppo but to some extent this is worse," he told The Associated Press in an interview from Oslo, Norway. 
 
 Recapturing eastern Ghouta, a short drive away from the Syrian capital, would mark the biggest victory yet for President Bashar Assad in the seven year war. It would also be the worst setback for rebels since the opposition was ousted from eastern Aleppo in late 2016 after a similar siege and bombing campaign. 
 
 Eastern Ghouta is larger and more populated, with some 400,000 people believed to be living there, trapped under a relentless air and ground bombardment and a crippling years-long siege. More than 800 people have been killed just in the past three weeks. 
 
 In rapid advances overnight, troops and allied militiamen seized more than half of the area, including a stretch of farmland, isolating the northern and southern parts of the territory, cutting links between the rebels and further squeezing opposition fighters and civilians trapped inside, state media and a war monitor reported. 
 
 Videos released by the opposition's volunteer rescue group, also known as the White Helmets, captured the inferno in eastern Ghouta, including a shell exploding as an ambulance sped through the street after loading in an apparently wounded person. 
 
 The government forces advanced from the east and were only about a mile away from linking with forces on the western side of eastern Ghouta. The military gains have caused wide-scale internal displacement as civilians flee government advances toward areas in the territory still held by the rebels. 
 
 The most densely populated areas in eastern Ghouta are still under rebel control, including the towns of Douma, Harasta, Kfar Batna, Saqba and Hammouriyeh. As government troops bombed their way into the town of Beit Sawa on Wednesday, many terrorized civilians fled east to the towns of Arbeen and Hammouriyeh. 
 
 "The fact is we have seen possibly the worst fighting ever in eastern Ghouta in these last 24 hours and in that kind of situation you cannot deliver anything," Egeland said. "It is impossible to cross into the frontline and to go in to help desperate civilians, women and children that we know are on the starvation point." 
 
 Egeland said there are intensive diplomatic efforts for a humanitarian pause that would lead to the evacuation of 1,000 priority cases for medical treatment and expressed hope that another convoy would be able to make its way there Friday. He called on the Syrian government and Russia as the stronger parties, but also on countries that have influence over the armed rebel groups, to secure a period of calm. 
 
 Egeland also confirmed there are talks between the parties on the possible evacuation of fighters and civilians which he said aid workers are not party to. 
 
 The government, determined to wrest the eastern Ghouta suburbs from rebel control after seven years of war, has intensified the shelling and bombardment to clear the way for its troops to advance on the ground. 
 
 Doctors and residents reported intense shelling and cases of suffocation and breathing difficulties, accusing the government of using chlorine gas Wednesday night. Hamza Hassan, a surgeon working at one of the hospitals in eastern Ghouta, said staff was overwhelmed with chlorine odor and that he treated 29 children with breathing problems. 
 
 Such reports, which have been recurrent in the past weeks, could not be independently confirmed. The government has repeatedly denied using chlorine gas. 
 
 Syrian state TV said dozens of families gathered in the town of Saqba in an attempt to use a humanitarian corridor to leave eastern Ghouta, adding that "terrorist groups" threatened and prevented them from getting out. 
 
 Ingy Sedky, the ICRC spokeswoman in Syria, said Thursday's aid convoy was postponed, and had no confirmation when it would take place. 
 
 "The situation is evolving rapidly on the ground, which doesn't allow us to carry out the operation in such conditions," she said. 
 
 Earlier this week, the first convoy in weeks made it into the town of Douma in eastern Ghouta, but 14 of the 46 trucks were not able to fully offload critical humanitarian supplies because of stepped-up violence. 
 
 Civilians are not safe anywhere in eastern Ghouta, and aid workers who entered briefly on Monday said some residents had not seen sunlight for two weeks because they were sheltering underground. 
 
 Russia's military has said it is playing a key role supporting the assault on eastern Ghouta to combat "terrorists" hiding there and threatening Damascus. 
 
 Meanwhile, fighting continued in the north between Turkish troops and allied militiamen and Syrian Kurdish forces in the Kurdish-controlled enclave of Afrin. 
 
 Turkey's foreign minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said his government hopes that the cross-border military offensive in Afrin will end before May. He spoke during a joint news conference with his Austrian counterpart in Vienna. 
 
 Turkey's military said meanwhile that Turkish troops and their allies had taken control of the town of Jinderes, in the enclave's southwest, after engaging in street clashes with Syrian Kurdish forces. 
 
 Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said that a siege of Afrin's main city would begin after Jinderes is taken. 
 
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 Associated Press writer Suzan Fraser in Ankara, Turkey, contributed reporting. ||||| Aid groups warn situation in eastern Ghouta could unfold into worst atrocity of war so far 
 
 Almost 200 civilians have been killed in dozens of airstrikes and shelling by forces loyal to Syria’s Bashar al-Assad in eastern Ghouta over two days of “hysterical violence”, which has led to warnings of a humanitarian catastrophe that could eclipse past atrocities in the seven-year war. 
 
 The surge in the killing in the besieged region came amid reports of an impending regime incursion into the area outside Damascus, which is home to 400,000 civilians. More than 700 people have been killed in three months, according to local counts, not including the deaths in the last week. 
 
 
 
 This is Eastern Ghouta, where hundreds are being killed and injured by Assad's forces Read more 
 
 Amnesty International said “flagrant war crimes” were being committed in eastern Ghouta on an “epic scale.” 
 
 
 
 Diana Semaan, the charity’s Syria researcher, said: “People have not only been suffering a cruel siege for the past six years, they are now trapped in a daily barrage of attacks that are deliberately killing and maiming them, and that constitute flagrant war crimes.” 
 
 Seven hospitals have also been bombed since Monday morning in eastern Ghouta, which was once the breadbasket of Damascus but has been under siege for years by the Assad government and subjected to devastating chemical attacks. Two hospitals suspended operations and one has been put out of service. 
 
 “We are standing before the massacre of the 21st century,” said a doctor in eastern Ghouta. “If the massacre of the 1990s was Srebrenica, and the massacres of the 1980s were Halabja and Sabra and Shatila, then eastern Ghouta is the massacre of this century right now.” 
 
 Quick guide What is happening in eastern Ghouta? Show Hide Where is it and why is it important? Eastern Ghouta is a rebel-held enclave that borders the city of Damascus. Once a breadbasket of the Syrian capital, since 2013 it has been under a siege that has tightened severely over the last year. In 2013 the area was targeted in a chemical attack by the Syrian regime that killed more than a thousand civilians and nearly prompted a US intervention in the war. Who controls it? The enclave is controlled by a mix of rebel groups dominated by the Islamist leaning Jaysh al-Islam, though the day-to-day affairs of the towns in the area are run by local civilian councils. How bad is the humanitarian situation? The situation is catastrophic for the 400,000 civilians who still live in eastern Ghouta. Prices for basic foodstuffs have skyrocketed and medical supplies are mostly absent because of the siege. Treating the injured is especially difficult because of the repeated bombing of hospitals and clinics. An estimated 700 civilians have been killed in the area in the last three months alone, not including those killed over the last week of escalation. The first aid convoy to the region in months arrived a week ago but did not do much to alleviate the suffering. Photograph: Hamza Al-Ajweh/AFP 
 
 He added: “A little while ago a child came to me who was blue in the face and barely breathing, his mouth filled with sand. I emptied it with my hands. I don’t think they had what we do in any of the medical textbooks. A wounded child breathing with lungs of sand. You get a child, a year old, that they saved from the rubble and is breathing sand, and you don’t know who he is. 
 
 “All these humanitarian and rights organisations, all that is nonsense. So is terrorism. What is a greater terrorism than killing civilians with all sorts of weapons? Is this a war? It’s not a war. It’s called a massacre.” 
 
 
 
 Facebook Twitter Pinterest Smoke rises from buildings following bombardment on the village of Mesraba in the rebel-held besieged eastern Ghouta region. Photograph: Hamza Al-Ajweh/AFP/Getty Images 
 
 The Syrian civil defense, a search and rescue organisation, said 61 people were killed on Tuesday alone, while the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based monitor, said 194 people had died in the last 48 hours– a toll that encapsulated the unbridled violence of the war in Syria. After seven years and interventions by regional and global powers, the humanitarian crisis has heightened instead of abating, as forces loyal to Assad’s regime and his Russian and Iranian backers seek an outright military victory instead of a negotiated political settlement. 
 
 Exact death tolls were difficult to obtain owing to ongoing rescue operations and because some families buried their dead without taking them to local hospitals. 
 
 Rebel groups responded with a wave of artillery bombardment targeting Damascus, killing 12 people and wounding 50 in government-controlled areas, according to the Observatory. 
 
 Aid workers said the latest violence in eastern Ghouta, where 1,300 people died in 2013 after the Assad regime deployed sarin gas, has included the use of notorious barrel bombs. The weapons are so inaccurate that their use is seen as a war crime by human rights watchdogs. The regime has also used fighter jets and artillery bombardment, on top of the punishing siege. 
 
 Eastern Ghouta is another Srebrenica, we are looking away again | Simon Tisdall Read more 
 
 “The situation in eastern Ghouta is akin to the day of judgment,” said Mounir Mustafa, the deputy director of the White Helmets, the volunteer group that rescues people from under the rubble of bombed buildings. 
 
 
 
 The White Helmets said one of its volunteers, Firas Juma, died on Monday while responding to a bombing. 
 
 In Geneva, the UN children’s fund issued a blank “statement” to express its outrage at the casualties among Syrian children, saying it had run out of words. 
 
 Medical organisations said at least five clinics and hospitals, including a maternity centre, were bombed on Monday, some of them multiple times. An anaesthetist was killed in the attacks. Another two facilities were hit on Tuesday. 
 
 “The bombing was hysterical,” said Ahmed al-Dbis, a security official at the Union of Medical and Relief Organisations (UOSSM), which runs dozens of hospitals in areas controlled by the opposition in Syria. “It is a humanitarian catastrophe in every sense of the word. The mass killing of people who do not have the most basic tenets of life.” 
 
 
 
 Mark Schnellbaecher, the Middle East director for the International Rescue Committee, said: “Once again we are seeing civilians in Syria being killed indiscriminately. Once again we are seeing medical facilities attacked. We have long feared eastern Ghouta will see a repeat of the terrible scenes observed by the world during the fall of east Aleppo and these fears seem to be well founded.” 
 
 Sonia Khush, an official with Save the Children, described the situation as “absolutely abhorrent.” 
 
 “The bombing has been relentless, and children are dying by the hour,” she said. “These families have nowhere left to run – they are boxed in and being pounded day and night.” 
 
 Elsewhere in Syria on Tuesday, pro-government fighters started entering the northern Kurdish enclave of Afrin, where Turkish troops have been on the offensive for a month. The development came a day after Turkey said it would hit back at the troops if their goal was to protect the Kurdish fighters. 
 
 Syrian state media said Turkish troops fired on the pro-government militiamen, a development that risks widening an already complicated war.
– The name Eastern Ghouta may not be a familiar one, but the neighborhood near the Syrian capital of Damascus is now making international headlines for all the wrong reasons. The enclave of 22 communities happens to be the last opposition-controlled region near the capital, and it's been the target of fierce bombing by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. On Monday, airstrikes and artillery shelling killed about 100 people, including 20 children, reports the AP, citing stats from the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and the civil defense group known as the White Helmets. The details: Assad's strategy: With the civil war now in its seventh year, Assad is looking to reclaim rebel-held territory through "an outright military victory instead of a negotiated settlement," per the Guardian. The bombardment could be paving the way for a ground assault against the two Islamist factions that control the neighborhood of about 350,000 people, reports Gulf News. One problem: This is a suburb with no international borders and thus is of little strategic value to world powers, explains the Washington Post. "As a result, there is no power broker such as Turkey, Russia or the United States to deploy ground troops or strike a backroom deal."