BEIRUT/UNITED NATIONS: A new wave of bombs struck Syria's eastern Ghouta district on Friday, witnesses said, ahead of a U.N. Security Council vote to demand a 30-day ceasefire to end one of the deadliest bombing campaigns of the seven-year-old civil war.

For a sixth straight day, warplanes flown by government forces and their allies pounded the densely populated enclave east of Damascus, the last rebel bastion near the capital.

The civilian casualties and devastation there are among the worst in Syria since the government captured rebel-held parts of Aleppo in intense fighting in 2016.

At least 462 people have been killed, including at least 99 children, and many hundreds injured, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said. Syrian state media reported one person was killed and 58 injured from rebel shelling of sites in Damascus, including a hospital.

In New York, the 10 elected members of the Security Council told reporters they were united in favour of the draft resolution for a cessation of hostilities in Syria and wanted it approved on Friday.

A vote scheduled for 11 a.m. EST (1600 GMT) was postponed until later in the day amid a flurry of last-minute negotiations on the text drafted by Sweden and Kuwait.

"We're still working on the language of some of the paragraphs, but we're almost there," Kuwait's U.N. Ambassador Mansour Ayyad Al-Otaibi said. "Hopefully we're so close to adopting this resolution today."

But all eyes were on Russia, and whether President Bashar al-Assad's veto-wielding ally would support the resolution, block it, or seek to water it down. Passage of the resolution could clear the way for aid deliveries and medical evacuations.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said earlier on Friday that Moscow wanted guarantees that rebel fighters will not shoot at residential areas in Damascus.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron asked Russian President Vladimir Putin to support the Security Council resolution. Merkel, speaking in Brussels, said they wanted Putin to "do everything possible" to get it adopted on Friday.

Previous ceasefires have a poor record of ending fighting in Syria, and Moscow has a history of blocking Security Council measures that would harm Assad's interests.

Syria's government has often used the tactic of pushing rebels to surrender their strongholds after long sieges and military offensives.

Insurgents in eastern Ghouta have vowed not to accept such a fate, ruling out an evacuation of fighters, their families and other civilians of the kind that ended rebellion in Aleppo and Homs after heavy bombardment in earlier years.

"We refuse categorically any initiative that includes getting the residents out of their homes and moving them elsewhere," Ghouta rebel factions wrote in a letter to the Security Council on Friday.

Eastern Ghouta has 400,000 people spread over a larger area than other enclaves the government has recaptured. Late on Thursday, government aircraft dropped leaflets urging civilians to depart and hand themselves over to the Syrian army, marking corridors through which they could leave safely.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said government planes and artillery hit Douma, Zamalka and other towns across the enclave in the early hours of Friday.

There was no immediate comment from the Syrian military.

Medical charities say more than a dozen hospitals have been hit, making it nearly impossible to treat the wounded.

A witness in Douma who asked not to be identified said by telephone that the early morning bombing was the most intense so far. Another resident, in the town of Hamouriyeh, said the assault had continued "like the other days."

"Whenever the bombing stops for some moments, the civil defence vehicles go out to the targeted places. They work to remove the debris from the road," Bilal Abu Salah said.

The Civil Defence there said its rescuers rushed to help the wounded after strikes on Hamouriyeh and Saqba. The emergency service, which operates in rebel territory, says it has pulled out hundreds of people from under rubble in recent days.

Damascus and Moscow say they only target militants. They have said their main aim is to stop rebel shelling of the capital, and have accused insurgents in Ghouta of holding residents as human shields.

Hamza Birqdar, the military spokesman for the Jaish al-Islam rebel faction, said it had thwarted nine attacks by pro-government militias trying to storm a front in the southeast of Ghouta.

The towns and farms of eastern Ghouta have been under government siege since 2013, with shortages of food, water and electricity that worsened last year.

The U.N. envoy for Syria has pleaded for a truce to prevent a "massacre." Staffan de Mistura renewed his call on Friday to stop both the "horrific heavy bombardment" of besieged eastern Ghouta and indiscriminate mortar shelling of Damascus.

The resolution to be considered by the Security Council does not cover Islamic State, al Qaeda or the Nusra Front, which Moscow and Damascus say they have targeted in eastern Ghouta.</s>UNITED NATIONS — The United Nations Security Council, facing staunch opposition from Russia, failed to pass a resolution on Thursday that would have imposed a 30-day cease-fire in Syria to allow humanitarian aid to reached a besieged Damascus suburb.

With new reports on Thursday of a rocket attack that took 42 lives, the death toll this week in the rebel-held suburb, eastern Ghouta, rose to more than 300.

The suffering of civilians in Syria “brings shame on all of us,” Britain’s representative, Stephen Hickey, said at the Security Council meeting. He described the conditions in eastern Ghouta as a “hell on earth.”</s>Warplanes pounded the last rebel enclave near Syria's capital for a fifth day running on Thursday as the United Nations Security Council considered demanding a 30-day truce across the country to allow emergency aid deliveries and medical evacuations.

The UN envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, pleaded for a ceasefire to halt one of the fiercest air assaults of the 

 seven-year civil war and prevent a "massacre" in the besieged eastern Ghouta region on the outskirts of Damascus.

At least 403 people have been killed in eastern Ghouta district since Sunday night, according to the Syrian Observatory 

 for Human Rights war monitor, with more than 2,116 wounded from the assault by Syria's military and its allies.
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Majid Santiha, a father of four, was one of them — killed in an airstrike Wednesday. His body was carried away on a stretcher to a medical centre with his children.

'We will be judged by history'

One of his little boys was dug out from the rubble, blood trickling from cuts on his face. His sister, also alive, was slung over the shoulder of a rescue worker, her face and head scarf white from dust. Two other siblings also survived.

But with their father gone and their mother killed two years ago during a bombing in the Jobar district, their uncle will now raise the children.

"There is a need for avoiding the massacre, because we will be judged by history," UN Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura said, urging the 15-member security council to act. The council was meeting on Thursday to 

 discussion the situation at the request of Russia.

President Bashar al-Assad's main ally Russia, which wields a veto on the Security Council, said it could support a 30-day truce, but not one that included the Islamist militants it says the onslaught on eastern Ghouta is meant to target.

A resolution needs nine votes in favour and no vetoes by Russia, China, the United States, France or Britain to pass.

In the north, where Turkey launched an offensive in the past month against a Kurdish militia, the Kurds say pro-government fighters were now deploying to the front lines to help repel the Turkish advance.

Government forces have also entered a part of Aleppo controlled by the Kurdish YPG militia, a witness and a monitor group said, although the YPG denied this.

The Kurdish YPG — allies with the United States in other parts of Syria — have sought assistance in recent days from the Russian-backed government to resist the Turkish offensive, an example of the unexpected alliances wrought during a multi-sided conflict that has drawn in neighbours and world powers.

International attention is now focused on the humanitarian plight in the eastern Ghouta, where 400,000 people have been under siege for years and where government bombardment escalated sharply on Sunday, causing mass civilian casualties.

Residents of Douma, the biggest town in the district, described plumes of black smoke billowing from residential areas after planes dropped bombs from high altitude. Searches were underway for bodies amid the rubble in the town of Saqba and elsewhere, said rescuers.

De Mistura said he hoped the security council would agree to a resolution calling for a ceasefire in eastern Ghouta, but acknowledged it would be difficult.

"I hope it will. But it's uphill. But I hope it will. It is very urgent," he said as he arrived at the UN in Geneva.
• Syrian Civil War: 250 killed within 48-hour time period in pro-government attack, according to report

Aid workers and residents say Syrian army helicopters have been dropping "barrel bombs" — oil drums packed with explosives and shrapnel — on marketplaces and medical centres.

Residents and insurgents in eastern Ghouta say high-altitude jets of the kind involved in bombing on Thursday morning are Russian, as Moscow's warplanes typically fly higher than those of the Syrian air force.

Damascus and Moscow deny targeting civilian areas and accuse rebels of holding civilians as human shields. Western powers have also accused Russia of aiding the bombardment.

"Those who support the terrorists are responsible" for the situation in eastern Ghouta, Kremlins pokesperson Dmitry Peskov told a conference call with reporters.

"Neither Russia, nor Syria, nor Iran are in that category of states, as they are waging an absolute war against terrorists in Syria."

Sara Kayyali, Syria researcher for Human Rights Watch, said the situation in eastern Ghouta was deteriorating "at an exponential rate" with over 250 civilians dead in the last 48 hours. "Witnesses that we are speaking to on the ground are saying that it's 'raining bombs,'" she told Reuters in Geneva.

Robert Mardini, Middle East regional director for the International Committee of the Red Cross, said the ICRC was poised to offer emergency medical care in the enclave and carry out evacuations of wounded as soon as conditions permitted.

"We need to get clearance and acceptance by all sides to carry out our work. We have a convoy ready to be sent to eastern Ghouta ...as soon as there is reduction in the intensity of the fighting," he told Reuters at a media briefing in Beirut.

A White House statement said Washington backed the UN call for a ceasefire to allow access for aid and medical evacuations.

"The United States also calls upon Russia and its partners to live up to their obligations with respect to de-escalation zones, particularly those in eastern Ghouta and to end further attacks against civilians in Syria."</s>UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The United Nations Security Council will vote on Friday on a draft resolution demanding a 30-day truce in Syria to allow aid deliveries and medical evacuations, but it was not immediately clear if the text had won the support of Syrian ally Russia.

The vote comes as warplanes pounded eastern Ghouta, the last rebel enclave near Syria’s capital, for a fifth day running. U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres appealed on Wednesday for an immediate end to “war activities” there.

Russia on Thursday proposed amendments to the resolution drafted by Sweden and Kuwait, arguing that the language was unrealistic and that the 15-member Security Council could not simply impose a truce on Syria without consulting the parties.

It was not immediately clear what changes were made to the text. The council is due to vote at 11 a.m. (1600 GMT) on Friday, said Kuwait’s U.N. mission, president of the council for February.

A resolution needs nine votes in favor and no vetoes by Russia, China, the United States, Britain or France. Russia has cast 11 vetoes on possible Security Council action on Syria since its civil war began in 2011.

Previous attempts at a cessation of hostilities in Syria have quickly unraveled.</s>Sweden and Kuwait, which drafted the measure, requested the vote "as soon as possible," the Swedish mission said Wednesday, adding that it will likely be scheduled for Thursday.

It remained unclear whether Russia would resort to its veto to block the draft resolution.

The push for a vote came after UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres called for a halt of the "war activities" in Eastern Ghouta, Syria's rebel enclave which has come under a fierce bombing campaign by government forces.

As the death toll from airstrikes escalated sharply, Guterres said life for the 400,000 civilians of Eastern Ghouta had become "hell on earth".

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Russia called for an urgent council meeting on Thursday to discuss the crisis in Eastern Ghouta which Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia described as a "complex situation."

"There are terrorists there who the Syrian army is fighting and the terrorists are shelling Damascus," Nebenzia said.

"It's a complex situation and not just a one-way street," he said, according to remarks released by the Russian mission.

US Ambassador Nikki Haley shot back, saying it was "simply preposterous to claim that these attacks on civilians have anything to do with fighting terrorism."

"It's time to take immediate action in the hopes of saving the lives of the men, women, and children who are under attack by the barbaric Assad regime," she said in a statement.

The United States will support the draft resolution "as should every member of the council," Haley added.

No truce with Al-Qaeda, IS

The draft resolution would pave the way for the truce to go into effect 72 hours after the adoption of the measure and for aid deliveries and medical evacuations to begin 48 hours after that.

It demands the immediate lifting of all sieges including in Eastern Ghouta, Yarmouk, Foua and Kefraya and orders all sides to "cease depriving civilians of food and medicine indispensable to their survival."

In a concession to Russia, the draft was amended during tough-going negotiations last week to specify that the ceasefire does not apply to the Islamic State group or Al-Qaeda.

That would allow the Syrian government offensive to continue against Al-Qaeda-linked jihadists in Idlib, the last province in Syria outside the control of Damascus.

Some diplomats said they were hoping that Russia will abstain.

Sweden and Kuwait presented the measure to the council on February 9, but negotiations have dragged on as Syrian forces backed by Russia escalated their fierce offensive.

Close to 300 civilians have been killed since Sunday in Eastern Ghouta including 24 Syrians who died when government planes dropped barrel bombs on the town of Kafr Batna on Wednesday, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

More than 340,000 people have been killed and millions driven from the homes in the war, which next month enters its eighth year with no end in sight.

More than 13.1 million Syrians are in need of humanitarian aid, of whom 2.9 million live in besieged and hard-to-reach areas.</s>BEIRUT (AP) — The Latest on developments in Syria (all times local):

The U.N. Security Council has scheduled a vote at 11 a.m. EST Friday on a resolution demanding a 30-day cease-fire across Syria to deliver humanitarian aid to millions and evacuate the critically ill and wounded.

The draft resolution to be voted on rejects Russia's proposed amendments which would delay any cease-fire.

Whether Russia vetoes or abstains on the resolution remains to be seen.

Russia's amended U.N. resolution would rule out an immediate 30-day cease-fire in Syria to deliver aid and evacuate the critically ill proposed by Sweden and Kuwait and backed by most of the U.N. Security Council.

Several council diplomats who examined the Russian draft, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly, said it was unacceptable.

The final draft of the Swedish-Kuwait resolution orders the cease-fire to start 72 hours after the resolution' adoption.

A main Syrian opposition group is calling on the international community to prevent Russia from voting on a new U.N. Security Council resolution saying Moscow is part of the conflict in the Arab country.

Russia has been a main backer for Syrian President Bashar Assad and has joined the battle on his side since 2015 tipping the balance of power in his favor. Opposition activists say Russian warplanes are taking part in bombarding rebel-held eastern suburbs of the capital Damascus, also known as eastern Ghouta, where more than 400 people have been killed since Sunday.

Salwa Aksoy, vice president of the Syrian National Coalition, told reporters in Turkey that according to the United Nations charter countries that are part of a conflict have no right to vote on draft resolutions.

Sweden and Kuwait were seeking a vote on a resolution ordering a 30-day cease-fire to allow relief agencies to deliver aid and evacuate the critically sick and wounded from besieged areas to receive medical care.

But Russia's U.N. ambassador Vassily Nebenzia put forward last-minute amendments, saying the proposed resolution was "simply unrealistic." A new vote was likely Friday.

Aksoy said in Turkey Friday that "what is happening in Ghouta is a war of annihilation and crimes against humanity." She blamed Assad's government as well as his backers Russia and Iran for the violence.

She said over the past three months more than 2,000 civilians have been killed, nearly 5,000 wounded and 32 medical centers and clinics have been destroyed.

Human Rights Watch is criticizing the way Turkey is conducting its offensive in northern Syria, saying it has failed to take necessary precautions to avoid civilian casualties.

The New York-based group cites three attacks in the Afrin region in late January that it says killed a total of 26 civilians, including 17 children.

In a statement Friday, it called on Turkey to thoroughly investigate these strikes and make the findings public.

Turkey launched an air and ground offensive in the Kurdish-controlled region on Jan. 20, saying it aims to clear Afrin of Syrian Kurdish militia which Turkey considers to be an offshoot of its own outlawed Kurdish rebels fighting within Turkey.

According to several estimates around 120 civilians have been killed so far in the offensive. Turkey denies hitting civilians.

Copyright 2017 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.</s>The United Nations Security Council is expected to try again on Friday to approve a draft resolution calling for a 30-day ceasefire in Syria.

The cease-fire is meant to allow emergency aid to be delivered and medical evacuations to take place in some of the country's hardest-hit regions, such as Ghouta, the rebel-controlled eastern suburb of the capital, Damascus, which has been pounded by government warplanes for more than a week.

An attempt on Thursday to get such a resolution through the council failed when Syrian government ally Russia, refused to go along. It was not clear whether amendments put forward since then would mollify Moscow's objections.

As Reuters reports: "Russia on Thursday proposed amendments to the resolution drafted by Sweden and Kuwait, arguing that the language was unrealistic and that the 15-member Security Council could not simply impose a truce on Syria without consulting the parties."

Russia's U.N. ambassador Vassily Nebenzia said on Thursday that the proposed resolution was "simply unrealistic."

NPR's Lind Fasulo reports that most Security Council members want the truce to go into effect within 72 hours, but Russia favors language that calls on all sides to halt hostilities "as soon as possible."

To succeed, a resolution would need to garner nine votes on the council and no vetoes from the five permanent members – the United States, Britain, France, Russia and China.

The death toll in the six-day bombardment of Ghouta is estimated to be more than 400.

The Associated Press notes that "The number of casualties has overwhelmed rescuers and doctors at hospitals, many of which have also been bombed."

The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least five people were killed in raids on Hammouriyeh, Zamalka, Douma and al-Marj, according to Reuters.

In a just released report from Amnesty International, the group accuses Russia of having used its Security Council veto nine times "to shield the Syrian government from the consequences of war crimes and crimes against humanity."

"Russia's routine use of its veto had become the equivalent of acquiescence in war crimes, allowing all parties in Syria's conflict to act with impunity, with civilians paying the ultimate price," Amnesty says.</s>Delegates attended a UN Security Council meeting on Syria at the United Nations headquarters in New York</s>He accused his fellow ambassadors and United Nations officials of succumbing to “massive psychosis” perpetuated by the global news media, which he said had engaged in the “coordinated and repeated spread of the same rumors in recent days.”

The images of stacked bodies, burned and broken children, bombed-out hospitals and families huddling from rockets in makeshift shelters are no more than “propagandistic scenarios of catastrophe,” he said.

“You get the impression that all of eastern Ghouta consists only of hospitals and it is with them that the Syrian Army is fighting,” he said. “This is a well known method of information warfare.”

Mr. Nebenzya made clear that Russia, Syria’s primary military ally, would not support a cease-fire resolution for the time being.

Eastern Ghouta, a cluster of farms and small towns, is one of the last major areas held by Syrian rebels. With reports of hospitals being bombed there and shortages of food and water, the cease-fire was intended to allow humanitarian convoys to bring in food and medical supplies.

Ultimately the resolution, which was drafted by Kuwait and Sweden and supported by almost all of the 15 members of the Security Council, was not even put to a vote Thursday.

In remarks after the session, Syria’s ambassador, Bashar al-Jaafari, said accusations by the United States, Britain and France — which he called the “three musketeers” — that the Syrian government was indiscriminately bombing civilians were completely false. He accused them of ignoring rocket attacks by rebels in eastern Ghouta that have killed scores in Damascus.

The scene at the Security Council on Thursday underscored a growing sense of powerlessness and exasperation at the United Nations as the Syrian civil war reaches new levels of violence.

In response to reports of mass casualties among children in eastern Ghouta, Unicef issued a statement this week that was completely blank, explaining that there were no words left to describe the horrors.

Mark Lowcock, the United Nations under secretary general for humanitarian affairs, had no such problem: “Airstrikes, mortars, rockets, barrel bombs, cluster munitions, chemical weapons, thermite bombs, suicide bombs, snipers, double-tap attacks on civilians and the essential infrastructure they depend on, including hospitals and schools, rape, illegal detention, torture, child recruitment and sieges of entire cities reminiscent of medieval times.”

It is not clear what more can be done at the United Nations to break the impasse, though some diplomats said there was still hope for a vote on a cease-fire resolution on Friday.

In eastern Ghouta, residents and activists say even the underground shelters where hundreds have sought refuge from the continuing bombardment, are no longer safe.

On Thursday, local activists published a list of 42 victims, mostly women and children, who were killed when a rocket hit their shelter in the village of Beit Sawa this week. The names took three days to compile, the activists said, because rescue workers could only search for bodies during intervals in the bombing.

Only seven people who were in the shelter survived, said Mohyadeen Motassem, a media activist in Beit Sawa who was nearby at the time of the attack. He had been hiding in a neighboring shelter when the first strike hit. “Everyone else was martyred,” he said.

Among those named on the list was Fatimah Khaled Abdel Rizaq. She was number 20.

On lines 21 through 25 were the names of her five children.</s>UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The United Nations Security Council delayed a vote on Friday on a resolution demanding a 30-day truce in Syria to allow aid deliveries and medical evacuations, said Kuwait's U.N. mission, council president for February.

The vote has been postponed for at least an hour to 12 p.m. EST (1700 GMT) amid a flurry of last-minute negotiations on the text drafted by Sweden and Kuwait. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said earlier on Friday Moscow wanted guarantees that rebel fighters will not shoot at Damascus residential areas.

 A resolution needs nine votes in favor and no vetoes by Russia, China, the United States, Britain or France. Russia has cast 11 vetoes on possible Security Council action on Syria since its civil war began in 2011.

 

 (Reporting by Michelle Nichols; Editing by James Dalgleish)
Russia blocks agreement on a United Nations Security Council resolution calling for a 30-day truce in Syria. A formal vote is postponed.