Britain and its Western allies on Thursday urged Russia to support calls for a ceasefire in Syria and an end to the "brutal and merciless" assault on Eastern Ghouta, which has killed more than 400 civilians over five days of intense bombardment.
As Russian and Syrian regime warplanes continued to pummel the rebel-held suburb of Damascus, world powers gathered at the UN Security Council in New York for an emergency meeting to discuss ways to end the killing.
The UK, US, and France called on Russia not to veto a resolution which would establish a 30-day nationwide ceasefire between Syrian rebel and regime forces and allow for the delivery of humanitarian aid to Eastern Ghouta and the evacuation of the wounded.
“I am utterly appalled by the brutal and merciless violence that the Assad regime is inflicting on the people of Eastern Ghouta. They are enduring a hell entirely of the making of Assad and his enablers,” said Boris Johnson, the foreign secretary.
“The UK will press Russia to support a ceasefire to allow for the urgent delivery of humanitarian aid. Protecting Syrians and getting them the lifesaving aid they need must be paramount.”
It was not immediately clear when the council would vote on the resolution but diplomats were engaged in intense negotiations to try to craft the measure in such a way that Russia would not veto it.
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Moscow has blocked several previous UN resolutions in the last seven years to shield its Syrian regime allies from international criticism.
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Russia said it was prepared to consider the resolution as long as it made clear that any ceasefire agreement did not apply to either al-Qaeda or the Islamic State. “The resolution that is on the table, we are ready to look at it, but we have offered very precise phrasing,” said Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister.
Russia told the UN Security Council on Thursday afternoon “there is no agreement” yet on the resolution and that it was demanding several amendments.
Russia has often broadly accused the Islamist rebels fighting against the Assad regime of being members of al-Qaeda, an accusation that has derailed previous ceasefire efforts.
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Several Western diplomats said they believed Russia would ultimately veto the resolution irrespective of any concessions made.
"If everyone in this chamber were to commit unequivocally [to the resolution] today it could have an impact on the ground," Stephen Hickey, the acting deputy British ambassador, told the UN council.
"It could save the lives of thousands of innocent men, women and children being killed as we speak today in this chamber."
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The resolution is being authored by Kuwait and Sweden. Olof Skoog, the Swedish UN ambassador, pleaded for a quick vote. "There has to be a decision very, very soon. People are dying," he said.
As the diplomats gathered in the UN’s Manhattan headquarters, the streets of Eastern Ghouta continued to shake with the blasts of bombs and the roar of aircraft overhead. “Anyone living in Eastern Ghouta is here waiting for death,” said Omran Dumani as he sheltered in a basement with his family.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a monitoring group, said 403 civilians had been killed since the bombardment began on Sunday, including 95 children. Activists said that more than 100 strikes were carried out by jets and helicopters on top of intensive artillery bombardment.
A video widely circulated on social media showed a father picking his son’s body off the back of a truck, where it lay wrapped in a white shroud alongside several other corpses. The man wept as he rocked his dead child back and forth.
Bassem, an anesthetist at one Eastern Ghouta’s beleaguered hospitals, said he and others in the besieged enclave had long ago stopped paying attention to what happened at the UN.
“All the people in Ghouta will tell you the same thing: the international community has abandoned us. There is no humanity in the world because if there were then we would not be in this situation,” he said.