Russian strikes kill 37 civilians in Ghouta

BEIRUT: Russian air strikes killed 37 civilians in the Arbin area of the shrinking rebel enclave of Eastern Ghouta near Damascus overnight, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Friday.

"Russian air strikes and incendiary weapons killed the civilians in a basement from burning or suffocation" late on Thursday before a ceasefire came into effect in the area, Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman said.

Russia has denied being directly involved in air strikes on Eastern Ghouta. The Britain-based Observatory says it relies on flight patterns, aircraft involved and ammunition used to determine who carries them out.

Meanwhile, Syrian rebels agreed to surrender a second besieged enclave in eastern Ghouta on Friday, state television reported, as their comrades in another insurgent pocket in the area continued their withdrawal after a month-long assault by the army.

Capturing eastern Ghouta, near the capital Damascus, would be Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s biggest victory over the rebels since driving them from Aleppo in December 2016. His army’s month-long attack on the enclave has splintered it into smaller besieged pockets, seizing most of its area and, according to a war monitor, killing more than 1,600 people.

Insurgents in one of those pockets - the town of Harasta began withdrawing in a convoy of buses for opposition territory in northwestern Syria on Thursday. More buses began to leave on Friday carrying fighters and their family members. Syrian state television broadcast their departure. From behind a half-drawn curtain, a woman in a headscarf could be seen gazing out through a spiderweb of bullet holes and cracks in the window of a bus as it prepared to carry her into exile.

A small child peered through another window. Meanwhile, state television cited its own correspondent as reporting that rebels in a second pocket around the towns of Arbin, Jobar, Zamalka and Ein Terma had also agreed to leave.