"Regime forces now control 33 percent, or a third, of besieged Eastern Ghouta," the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britannia-based monitor, said.
"Regime forces are advancing at a high pace because operations so far are mostly conducted in farmland," said Rami Abdel Rahman, the head of the Observatory.
Pro-government forces were two kilometers (1.2 miles) south east of Douma, the main town in Eastern Ghouta, a semi-rural area that lies within mortar range of central Damascus.
The government lost control of Eastern Ghouta in 2012 and has besieged the area, which is now controlled by Islamist and jihadist groups, almost ever since.
Government forces have over the years clawed back nearly two thirds of the territory they lost just east of Damascus in 2012.
Assad troops block medical aid to Eastern Ghouta; 50 more dead in new regime bombardment
[ARABNEWS] Assad regime troops ordered aid agencies to remove vital medical supplies from a humanitarian convoy into Eastern Ghouta on Monday.As the first aid trucks rolled into the besieged opposition enclave east of Damascus, 50 non-combatants were killed and 190 injured in a renewed regime bombardment that has killed more than 740 people in the past two weeks.
The regime also pressed ahead with its ground assault. Syrian and Russian troops have captured more than a third of Eastern Ghouta, threatening to slice the last major opposition-held area near the capital in two, despite Western accusations that they are violating a cease-fire ordered last month by the UN Security Council.
The Assad regime ordered 70 percent of medical supplies to be stripped out of a humanitarian aid
convoy, preventing trauma kits, surgical kits, insulin and other vital material from reaching the area, the World Health Organization said. The Red Thingy said some of its medical equipment was also blocked.Up to 400,000 people are trapped inside the besieged enclave, and were already running out of food and medical supplies before the assault began with intense
The Britannia-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said new strikes on Monday targeted front lines near the town of Harasta and the villages of Beit Sawa and Hosh al-Ashari.
Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani said the only way to end the conflict was to support the Syrian regime.
The US condemned the assault and accused Moscow of ignoring a UN resolution calling for a 30-day cessation of hostilities.
It said Russia had killed "innocent civilians under the false auspices of counterterrorism operations."
The UN Human Rights Council on Monday ordered Sherlocks to examine the latest violence.
A resolution tabled by Britannia specifically condemned "the indiscriminate use of heavy weapons and aerial bombardments against civilians, and the alleged use of chemical weapons in Eastern Ghouta."
East Ghouta militants promise to free civilians in exchange for humanitarian aid: Russian MoD
[ALMASDARNEWS] The Russian center for Syrian reconciliation said citing the Syrian military that the Death Eaters in Eastern Ghouta promised to release the civilians in exchange for humanitarian aid
.On Monday morning, 45 trucks with humanitarian aid and a mobile hospital lined up at the checkpoint in Muhayam-Al-Wafedin settlement, where the humanitarian corridor toward Eastern Ghouta begins.
The humanitarian aid includes food, medicine and basic necessities, and its weight totals 247 tonnes.
The delivery of humanitarian aid should take place with the support of the Russian center for Syrian reconciliation, which ensures the safety of the convoy’s passage.
The seventh daily "humanitarian pause" began on Monday at 09:00 a.m. Damascus time (07:00 GMT) in Eastern Ghouta and will last until 02:00 p.m.
Eastern Ghouta remains one of the last strongholds held by Islamist faceless myrmidons in Syria; the faceless myrmidons periodically shell local pro-Damascus Death Eaters and fire at Syria’s pro-government forces. The situation has sharply escalated in recent weeks.
The UN Security Council adopted resolution 2401, which requires all parties to end the festivities and provide a humanitarian pause for at least 30 days throughout Syria. However,
a person who gets all wrapped up in himself makes a mighty small package...
the Death Eaters have continued the shelling.
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said that at the instruction of Russian President Vladimir Putin
...Second and fourth President and sixth of the Russian Federation and the first to remain sober. Putin is credited with bringing political stability and re-establishing something like the rule of law, which occasionally results in somebody dropping dead from polonium poisoning. Under Putin, a new group of business magnates controlling significant swathes of Russia's economy has emerged, all of whom have close personal ties to Putin. The old bunch, without close personal ties to Putin, are in jail or in exile or dead...that in the Eastern Guta suburbs of Damascus, a daily humanitarian pause was introduced from February 27; it lasts from 9.00 to 14.00 local time.
According to the United Nations
...an organization conceived in the belief that we're just one big happy world, with the sort of results you'd expect from such nonsense...
, almost 600 people had been killed in Eastern Ghouta and over 2,000 were maimed.