First ‘humanitarian pause’ expected to begin on Tuesday and comes after UN security council’s demand for end to fighting goes unheeded

Vladimir Putin has ordered a daily five-hour “humanitarian pause” in the besieged Syrian enclave of eastern Ghouta to begin on Tuesday, effectively replacing a United Nations security council resolution that had demanded a month-long ceasefire in the embattled region.

The Russian president’s move, which was announced by his defence minister, Sergei Shoigu, highlighted in stark terms Russia’s primacy in Syrian affairs and the UN’s failure to impose an end to the fighting in the area bordering Damascus.

More than 500 people have been killed in eight days of one of the deadliest bombing campaigns by the regime of Bashar al-Assad and his allies during the seven-year war.

The move by Moscow follows mounting condemnation of the violence, with the UN secretary general, António Guterres, describing the situation in Ghouta as “hell on earth”.

Shoigu said a ceasefire would begin on Tuesday in the Damascus suburb and would take place from 9am until 2pm (7am GMT to 12pm) daily, according to a transcript of his remarks published by the Russian news agency Interfax. Russia, a key ally of the Syrian regime, would also help create an evacuation route for civilians in the area, he added.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said calm had generally prevailed in eastern Ghouta since midnight, though four rockets had hit the town of Douma on Tuesday morning.

The announcement on Monday came after at least 29 people were killed in eastern Ghouta despite a UN security council resolutionthat demanded an immediate cessation of the fighting.

Local doctors and monitors said at least 18 people had been injured by a suspected chlorine attack in eastern Ghouta on Sunday evening. Residents have condemned the international community’s inability to put an end to the fighting.



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“I am embarrassed for the UN security council,” said Ghanem Tayara, the chairman of the Union of Medical Care and Relief Organisations, which helps run dozens of hospitals in Syria. “The mightiest nations on the planet cannot enforce the most basic standards of human rights and decency.”

The latest deaths in eastern Ghouta brought the weeklong carnage in the enclave to more than 500 killed in airstrikes and shelling by forces loyal to Assad. The security council resolution, which was unanimously approved on Saturday, called for a monthlong ceasefire “without delay”.



“Eastern Ghouta cannot wait. It is high time to stop this hell on earth,” Guterres told the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.

Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, the high commissioner for human rights, condemned the security council’s failure to end seven years of “unremitting and frightful mass killing”.

He said: “Second to those who are criminally responsible – those who kill and those who maim – the responsibility for the continuation of so much pain lies with the five permanent members of the UN security council. So long as the veto is used by them to block any unity of action, when it is needed the most, when it could reduce the extreme suffering of innocent people, then it is they – the permanent members – who must answer before the victims.”

The violence has highlighted the Syrian government’s desire, alongside its allies in Moscow and Tehran, to score a military victory in the area, which has been under a tightening siege for nearly a year and is strategically significant owing to its proximity to Damascus.

Reports of an attack using chlorine, which has been used frequently in the past by the Assad regime, would represent a further escalation if confirmed. Doctors said they had treated patients in the town of Shifounieh after a bombing. The patients exhibited symptoms consistent with exposure to chlorine, including respiratory problems, inflammation in the eyes and mucous membranes, as well as cases of hysteria and dizziness, the doctors said.

A video released by the Syrian American Medical Society, which also helps run hospitals in opposition-held parts of Syria, showed children and first responders doused with water and breathing through oxygen masks.

“The most heartbreaking thing is the children and infants who are brought into the hospital from under the rubble and their entire family has been killed – mother, father and siblings,” said one doctor in Ghouta. “Where do we go with this child? Children whose age is in the single digits who have known nothing except fear and terror and death and shelling.

Play Video 0:26 Babies and children treated in Ghouta hospital on Sunday

“The humanitarian organisations have failed. I wonder if we can appeal to the animal rights organisations,” he added.



The watered-down resolution passed by the security council did not have a timeframe, though it called for a ceasefire “without delay” and the lifting of sieges as well as the delivery of humanitarian aid.

On Monday, the French president, Emmanuel Macron, told his Turkish counterpart, Reçep Tayyip Erdoğan, that the UN’s proposed 30-day ceasefire must be applied across the country, including in Afrin, where Turkey is waging an offensive against a Kurdish militia.

It “must be put into effect everywhere and by everyone without delay”, Macron said in a telephone call to Erdoğan, adding that Turkey, Russia and Iran, the three countries overseeing talks in Astana aimed at ending the civil war, “have a direct responsibility in this regard that must be applied on the ground”.

Ankara launched an offensive last month against the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) in Afrin in northern Syria.

On Sunday the Turkish government said the UN ceasefire would not affect its operation, which it claims is aimed at fighting “terrorist organisations that threaten the territorial integrity and political unity of Syria”.

Turkey sees the YPG as the Syrian branch of the Kurdistan Workers’ party (PKK), which for more than three decades has waged an insurgency against the Turkish state and is classified by Turkey, the US and the European Union as a terrorist group.

But the offensive has raised tensions with Washington, which works closely with the YPG in the fight against jihadists in Syria.

Agence France-Presse contributed to this report