**WAR IN SYRIA

UN rights council to hold urgent session on E Ghouta

O

Residents of rebel enclave wait for long-delayed aid**

Western powers yesterday turned up the heat on Damascus as tens of thousands of civilians in Syria's battered rebel enclave of Eastern Ghouta awaited desperately needed aid.

More than 600 civilians have been killed in the enclave outside Damascus since Russia-backed regime forces launched an assault on February 18.

Eastern Ghouta's 400,000 residents have lived under a regime-imposed siege since 2013, facing severe food and medicine shortages even before the latest offensive.

The UN Human Rights Council was to hold an emergency session later yesterday on the crisis, as dozens of aid trucks remained unable to enter the enclave.

The United States, Germany and France upped the pressure on Damascus after a UN Security Council demand for a ceasefire failed to stem the fighting.

US President Donald Trump and German Chancellor Angela Merkel agreed in a phone call that the Syrian regime must be held accountable.

"This applies both to the Assad regime's deployment of chemical weapons and for its attacks against civilians and the blockade of humanitarian support," a German chancellery statement said.

Trump and French President Emmanuel Macron, meanwhile, vowed there would be "no impunity"

in the event of further chemical weapons use in Syria.

Washington has asked the UN Security Council to set up a new inquiry into chemical weapons attacks in Syria after reports of suspected chlorine use in Eastern Ghouta, according to a draft resolution obtained by AFP on Thursday.

The Syrian government has denied using chemical weapons and Russia has questioned UN findings that it carried out sarin and chlorine attacks.

Yesterday, distrust ran high among civilians in Eastern Ghouta on the fourth day of a daily five-hour "humanitarian pause".

The pause announced by Russia has tempered but not halted the bombing, which has ripped through houses and reduced residential areas to grey rubble.

Embattled Syrian civilians have not left the enclave, despite a Russian offer of safe passage out during the daily halt in fighting. Damascus and Moscow accuse the armed opposition of preventing civilians from leaving.

Early yesterday, before the pause's 07:00 GMT start, warplanes pounded areas including Douma and the town of Zamalka, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Rockets fell on Douma and Harasta during the pause, the Britain-based war monitor said, as regime forces advanced on the southern outskirts of the enclave.