A cease-fire went into effect Friday after intense government attacks killed at least 37 people in an underground shelter, prompting a rebel group to call for negotiations to evacuate a new section of the besieged eastern Ghouta region near the capital Damascus, rescuers and a rebel spokesman said.
The cease-fire will mean the surrender of the second of three pockets in eastern Ghouta, where rebels have been holding up over the past years. On Thursday, hundreds streamed out of Harasta, the first pocket after a similar negotiated cease-fire and evacuation of armed fighters and civilians.
The Air strikes hit a rebel-held enclave of Syria’s eastern Ghouta region on Friday despite a ceasefire that the rebel group who controlled the area had said would take effect at midnight, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
The air strikes hit Ein Terma and Zamalka on Friday morning and pro-government forces had advanced into a large part of the town of Hezzeh after the midnight ceasefire deadline, according to the Britain-based Observatory, a war monitoring group.
On Thursday, a spokesman for rebel group Failaq al-Rahman said the ceasefire had been agreed in principle.
The army’s assault on eastern Ghouta, the last major rebel bastion near the capital, has been one of the most intense in Syria’s seven-year-old war.
The Syrian government and its Russian allies used tactics that had proved successful elsewhere in Syria since Moscow joined the war in 2015: lay siege to an area, bombard it, launch a ground assault and finally offer safe passage out to rebels who agree to leave with their families.
