Intensified fighting in the besieged enclave blocks vital deliveries, as figures reveal 1,000 children killed or injured in Syria so far in 2018

At least 1,000 children have been killed and injured across Syria so far this year according to the UN, as it disclosed that more than one quarter of the trucks carrying food into besieged eastern Ghouta on Monday were forced to leave the enclave again without unloading.

Officials told the Guardian that they had been unable to unload a significant amount of food from the 46 lorries before they were forced to leave as the suburbs came under attack in the worst day of violence since the UN security council demanded a 30-day ceasefire for Syria.

It came as it emerged that children inside eastern Ghouta are surviving on a single meal a day of boiled wheat mixed with sugar. There are an estimated 400,000 civilians trapped in the enclave.

Details of the convoy’s failure came as the Russian military said it had offered Syrian rebels safe passage out of eastern Ghouta, setting out a proposal to let the opposition surrender its last major stronghold near Damascus to President Bashar al-Assad.



The Russian defence ministry said rebels could leave with their families and personal weapons through a secure corridor out of eastern Ghouta, where Moscow-backed government forces have made rapid gains in a fierce assault.

The Russian proposal did not specify where the rebels would go, but the terms echo previous deals under which insurgents have ceded ground to Assad and been given safe passage to other opposition-held territory near the Turkish border.

A Unicef spokesman in Damascus said a second convoy was planned for next week. “We are at least able to deliver some aid but other trucks were not fully or partially offloaded with colleagues telling us that people were tearful and angry as they were expecting the aid to get delivered,” he said.

“People in Douma told us their conditions had been very bad. They are spending a lot of time under ground in cold and humid basements and having no proper sanitation is the norm. People are basically using buckets.

“Access to safe drinkable water is also a problem. People are using hand operated pumps in shallow water and it is polluted. We also spoke to kids who said they were getting one meal a day of wheat, sugar and water. It gives you calories but it is not nutritious.”

The International Committee for the Red Cross also confirmed that its joint convoy with the United Nations had to leave before offloading all its supplies because of the deteriorating security situation Monday.

Ingy Sedky, the ICRC spokeswoman in Syria, said most of the aid from a 46-truck convoy was delivered to the town of Douma in eastern Ghouta, but the mission was cut short before the rest of the supplies could be unloaded.

Iyad Abdelaziz, a member of the Douma Local Council, said nine aid trucks had to leave the area after government shelling and airstrikes intensified in the evening.

Observers say the continuing offensive in eastern Ghouta appears to be following similar tactics to those that Assad and his allies have used at other key points in the war: laying siege to rebel-held areas, bombing them fiercely, launching a ground assault and offering passage out to civilians who flee and fighters who withdraw.

Wael Alwan, the spokesman for one of the main rebel groups in eastern Ghouta, Failaq al-Rahman, said Russia was “insisting on military escalation and imposing forced displacement” on the people of eastern Ghouta, which he called “a crime”.