UN ‘failed to prevent’ war crimes in Syria: Assad’s forces seize two towns in Ghouta

BEIRUT/RIYADH: Syria’s regime retook two more towns in Eastern Ghouta on Saturday, a war monitor said, pressing an offensive to capture the rebel enclave on the doorstep of Damascus.

Assad’s forces seized Kafr Batna and Sabqa in the south of the enclave, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, as thousands of civilians fled into regime-held territory.

Russia-backed regime forces have retaken more than 80 percent of the last opposition bastion outside the capital since launching a blistering air and ground offensive on February 18, the Observatory says.

The assault has split opposition-held areas into three shrinking pockets each held by different rebels.

The southern pocket is held by the Faylaq al-Rahman rebel group, which the Observatory says counts some 8,000 fighters in its ranks.

After Saturday’s advance, the group now controls just a handful of areas, the monitor says: Arbin -- the largest -- as well as Zamalka, Hazeh, Ain Tarma and parts of the Damascus neighbourhood of Jobar.

Thousands of civilians streaming out of the enclave into regime-held areas on Saturday came mostly from this southern sector, it said.

On Friday, the enclave’s main rebel groups -- Faylaq al-Rahman, Jaish al-Islam and Ahrar al-Sham -- said they would be willing to hold direct UN-sponsored talks with regime backer Russia on a ceasefire.

More than 1,400 civilians have been killed since the regime offensive began, the Observatory says, while tens of thousands more have fled.

Jaish al-Islam controls an area around the main town of Douma in the north of the former enclave, while Ahrar al-Sham holds influence in the area of the town of Harasta to the west.

Meanwhile, the head of Syria’s main opposition group on Saturday accused the United Nations of failing to prevent violence raging in the war-wracked country, including the assault on the Eastern Ghouta rebel enclave.

"We hold the United Nations, the Security Council and the international community ... directly responsible for their silence around these crimes and for failing to take action to prevent these crimes," Nasr al-Hariri, president of the Syrian Negotiation Commission (SNC), told reporters in Riyadh.

"But let us not forget that the party that holds direct responsibility for the crimes are the Syrian regime and the countries that continue to stand by it".

Russian-backed Syrian regime forces have waged a blistering assault on Eastern Ghouta that has retaken 70 percent of the enclave near Damascus since February 18.

The offensive has killed around 1,400 civilians, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor which relies on a network of sources on the ground. The assault has sparked an exodus with more than 40,000 civilians pouring into surrounding government-held areas over the past 48 hours.

More than 350,000 people have been killed and millions displaced since the Syria war broke out in 2011 with the brutal repression of anti-government protests.