UN urges 72-hour ceasefire to bring aid to Syria’s Ghouta region

The UN calls for an urgent ceasefire in Syria’s Eastern Ghouta region, near Damascus, to allow in desperately needed aid and avoid a repeat of the devastation seen in Aleppo.

“We need a 72-hour pause for Eastern Ghouta, and we need it in the coming days,” the head of the United Nations-backed humanitarian taskforce for Syria, Jan Egeland, tells reporters in Geneva.

He warns that the some 400,000 people besieged in the area near Damascus “are now suffering alone in the sense that they have a shortage of medical supplies, their hospitals have been bombed, and they are running out of food and other supplies.”

Eastern Ghouta, the last remaining opposition stronghold near the capital, has been under a devastating government siege since 2012, and is targeted regularly by air strikes and artillery.

During the weekly meeting of the humanitarian taskforce for Syria, co-chairs Russia and the United States, along with others had agreed to “look specifically at the Eastern Ghouta situation,” Egeland says.

“Everybody agrees, including the Russians, that the situation there is very dire, and that a special … agreement is needed for Eastern Ghouta,” he says.

“Nobody wants another eastern Aleppo to be happening on our watch,” he insists, referring to the drawn-out siege and massive Syrian army offensive last year to retake the former rebel stronghold.

— AFP