A new United Nations resolution demanding a cease-fire across Syria appeared to temper the violence Sunday, although Syrian government forces began new ground attacks against a rebel-held enclave east of Damascus, the capital, and continued airstrikes and shelling that have killed more than 500 people there in the past week.
The bombardment killed at least six people Sunday, opposition activists and residents of Damascus said.
Attacks on residential areas appear to have shifted to strikes on front lines where some of the most intense fighting took place throughout the day between government forces and insurgents. State media said troops pushed into the eastern suburbs, reports that the opposition denied.
Opposition activists reported clashes on the southern edge of the rebel-held suburbs, known as eastern Ghouta, and two airstrikes late Saturday night, shortly after the U.N. Security Council resolution calling for a 30-day cease-fire was adopted. During the day Sunday, more shelling and airstrikes were reported in eastern Ghouta and Damascus.
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There were reports Sunday evening of a suspected chlorine attack, with one child killed in eastern Ghouta and 11 people suffering symptoms such as labored breathing, according to medical workers supported by the Syrian American Medical Society.
The drop in violence came after a week of intense airstrikes and shelling that killed more than 500 people in eastern Ghouta and left dozens dead or wounded in government-held Damascus, which rebels pelted with mortar shells.
"This has been the calmest night since last Sunday," said Rami Abdurrahman, who heads the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, referring to the start of the bombing campaign Feb. 19. He added that clashes between troops and rebels on Sunday were the most intense this month.
Other activists said the violence hasn't eased.
"Actually there is no cease-fire at all," Firas Abdullah, an anti-government activist in eastern Ghouta, said via Internet chat. "Assad airplanes and Russian airplanes are still hitting the cities of eastern Ghouta. Now while I am talking, there is a helicopter from the Assad army, just flying above us."
Syrian state TV said the army captured several buildings in the rebel-held suburb of Harasta and pushed into several other areas in eastern Ghouta, which is besieged by government forces from all sides.
The Ghouta Media Center, an activist collective, said members of the Army of Islam insurgent group repelled the Syrian army's attacks on several fronts, adding that many soldiers were killed.
The push by the army appears to be similar to steps taken in rebel-held eastern neighborhoods of the northern city of Aleppo, which government forces captured one after another until rebels eventually agreed to leave the city in December 2016.
"The Assad regime and his allies have shown no respect to the Security Council by launching their most intense offensive on Ghouta from several directions hours after the resolution was adopted," said Ghouta-based activist Ahmad Khanshour.
Asked whether people were able to leave underground shelters where they have been hiding for days with little food and water, Khanshour said: "We are still underground and dying." Khanshour added that he was hiding with 45 others in a shelter.
The Observatory said Sunday's airstrikes and shelling killed eight people and wounded dozens in several areas in eastern Ghouta. The opposition's Syrian Civil Defense, also known as White Helmets, said six were killed in the towns of Saqba, Beit Sawa, Arbeen and Hammouriyeh. The discrepancy in the reports couldn't immediately be reconciled.
The state-run Syrian Arab News Agency said insurgents breached the truce by firing 15 shells Sunday on government-held areas on the edge of Ghouta.
Dr. Sakhr al-Dimashqi, a surgeon at a Ghouta clinic, said several shells hit some towns in the suburbs, adding that his clinic received six wounded people.
"The shelling today is not as intense as over the past week," he said.
The two largest and most powerful rebel factions in Ghouta, Failaq al-Rahman and Army of Islam, issued statements saying they will abide by the cease-fire unless they are forced to fire in self-defense. Both called for the "immediate delivery" of emergency aid.
The resolution excludes fighting against members of the Islamic State militant group and al-Qaida-linked fighters. Ghouta is also home to a few hundred members of the al-Qaida-linked Levant Liberation Committee.
The cease-fire resolution had no specific start time, only saying "without delay." The Army of Islam called on the U.N. to broker the departure of the al-Qaida-linked group, known by its Arabic initials, HTS.
"The presence of HTS elements in the outskirts of one of the towns in Ghouta is not an excuse for burning all of al-Ghouta and killing of 400,000 citizens," Mohammad Alloush, spokesman for the Army of Islam, said on Twitter.
Previous cease-fires, like ones in Aleppo, have foundered on this issue: The opposition says the government and its ally Russia bomb wherever they like, asserting that al-Qaida is present, while the government says the non-al-Qaida rebels are allied with the group.
Russia's Foreign Ministry said Sunday that the fight against the Islamic State and al-Qaida's affiliate will continue, despite what it described as attempts by certain external players to engage "international terrorists and groups of opposition militants joining them to implement plans that are still nurtured to overthrow the legitimate authorities of Syria and dismember the country."
Russia has been a main backer of Assad since the country's conflict began.
A top Iranian military official said Sunday that Iran and Syria would abide by the cease-fire resolution but that the suburbs of Damascus would not be included because they are "under terrorists' control."
"The cleansing operation will continue in those areas," said Maj. Gen. Mohammed Hossein Baqeri, chief of staff of the Iranian armed forces, according to Iran's Tasnim news agency.
Alloush said the al-Qaida-linked fighters were ready to leave.
"We want to remove this excuse" for bombing the area, he added. "The Russians are trying to repeat Aleppo."
TURKISH OFFENSIVE
In northern Syria, the Observatory and the Lebanon-based Al-Mayadeen TV said, Turkish troops shelled the Kurdish enclave of Afrin, where Turkey and the Syrian opposition fighters it supports have been on the offensive since Jan. 20.
The Turkish military and its allies took three more villages from the U.S.-backed Kurdish militia near the town of Afrin on Sunday, according to Turkey's official news agency. The military announced that a Turkish soldier was killed Saturday, bringing the army's death toll to 33.
Turkey also said it would continue its offensive in the enclave.
The Turkish armed forces "will remain resolute in fighting against the terrorist organizations that threaten the territorial integrity and political unity of Syria," Turkish Foreign Ministry spokesman Hami Aksoy said.
Also on Sunday, a senior Kurdish official from Syria was detained in the Czech Republic under an extradition request from Turkey, according to Czech police and Turkey's official Anadolu News Agency.
The official, Salih Muslim, is the foreign affairs spokesman for the Movement for a Democratic Society, the political coalition that governs the Kurdish regions of northern Syria. He was detained after an Interpol "red notice" was issued by the Turkish government, which describes him as a terrorist, the agency said.
Czech police issued a statement confirming the arrest of a 67-year-old man on a Turkish extradition request. Muslim's aides confirmed that the statement referred to him.
An official with the Kurdistan National Congress in Vienna said Muslim had been arrested at his hotel in Prague, the Czech capital, where he was speaking against Turkey's invasion of Afrin.
Though an Interpol red notice is a request from a country to detain someone for extradition, it is not itself a criminal charge.
Muslim was formerly the co-president of the Democratic Union Party, the political arm of the People's Protection Units, the main Syrian Kurdish militia.
Turkey claims the groups are part of the Turkish-based Kurdistan Workers' Party which was designated as a terrorist organization by the European Union and the United States, although the Syrian organizations have not been.
Information for this article was contributed by Bassem Mroue, Albert Aji, Zeynep Bilginsoy and Jim Heintz of The Associated Press; by Anne Barnard, Hwaida Saad and Rod Nordland of The New York Times; and by Liz Sly of The Washington Post.
A Section on 02/26/2018