Damascus shelling kills 3 before truce agreed

Syrians walk past vehicles of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the UN during a humanitarian delivery in the Nashabiyeh town, Eastern Ghouta, on Tuesday. (AFP)

BEIRUT: Shelling killed three people in the last major opposition stronghold near Damascus on Tuesday, a war monitor said, shortly before the UN Syria envoy said the regime had agreed a cease-fire there.
Russia had on Monday proposed a cease-fire in the besieged Eastern Ghouta area on Nov. 28-29. UN Syria envoy Staffan De Mistura later said Russia had told him that the Syrian regime had accepted the idea, but he added: “We have to see if it happens.”
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the war monitor, said there were three deaths and 15 injuries from Tuesday’s shelling, but that it was less intense than in previous days. A witness in the area said that while the shelling was lighter earlier in the day, it had intensified later.
A Syrian official said the situation on Tuesday was calm.
The UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) tweeted that the joint convoy had “entered Nashabiyeh in besieged East Ghouta to deliver food, health and nutrition items for 7,200 people in need.”
OCHA spokeswoman Linda Tom told AFP the convoy included “nutrition items and medications to treat malnutrition.”
“And the health items include several medications for trauma treatments but not surgical items,” she said.
“Our teams are not part of any medical evacuation,” she added.
Over the weekend, regime airstrikes and shelling on Ghouta intensified, killing at least 43 people on Sunday and Monday, the observatory said. Syrian state media said 13 shells hit regime-held areas of Damascus on Monday.
Eastern Ghouta is one of several “de-escalation” zones across western Syria where Russia has brokered cease-fire deals between opposition fighters and President Bashar Assad’s regime. But fighting has continued there.
Médecins Sans Frontières, the international medical humanitarian organization, said on Monday hundreds of people had been wounded in intense bombing and shelling of Eastern Ghouta in the last two weeks.
It said five MSF-supported field hospitals in East Ghouta had treated 576 wounded patients and recorded 69 deaths, with a quarter of the wounded women or children under the age of 15.
In a statement, MSF said its figures did not account for the total numbers killed in the area as there are other medical facilities it does not support regularly.
A convoy carrying food and medical aid entered the town, the UN said, in a rare humanitarian delivery that came after days of heavy bombardment. A monitor said government air strikes continued Tuesday, hitting the town of Hammuriyeh shortly before the aid convoy entered the region, which has been under siege since 2013.