Ghouta in a sentence

In Eastern Ghouta, a region near Damascus that came under the longest siege since World War II, water supplies were cut and food aid was restricted and, at times, blocked entirely.

In eastern Ghouta, which the government recaptured last year after a siege, the government has been arresting former protest leaders and anti-government groups despite reconciliation deals, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

A child receives treatment in eastern Ghouta on Sunday.

After months of continued bombardment by Russia and Assad – and repeated calls for it to end by the U.S. – eastern Ghouta has now been largely retaken by Assad’s forces and civilians are being bused out.

After weeks of heavy bombardment on that part of the city, in a situation similar to what is happening in Ghouta now, a deal was brokered forcing those who oppose Assad to leave the city.

A large number of Eastern Ghouta residents were bussed to the northern province of Idlib, which almost entirely escapes government control and hosts several jihadist and other rebel groups.

Al-Fath has long been a pillar of the state-backed Sunni religious establishment, though many junior scholars hailing from Eastern Ghouta joined the rebels after 2011.

A mother of six children, she once lived in what has become a scene of utter destruction in the region known as Ghouta.

An army officer interviewed on state television said rebels who had not yet negotiated similar deals to evacuate from other towns in eastern Ghouta must quit or die.

An estimated 400,000 people live in Eastern Ghouta.

Army of Islam military spokesman Hamza Bayraqdar tells The Associated Press that the reports are false, adding that his group's stance is to reject displacement and demographic change in the area known as eastern Ghouta.

A suffocating, years-long government siege has forced Eastern Ghouta’s estimated 400,000 inhabitants to scrape by on smuggled goods, produce from local farms and rare aid deliveries.

At least 260 people have been killed in government airstrikes on rebel-held eastern Ghouta since Sunday night, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights group which closely monitors the fighting through activists on the ground.

Battle for control of eastern Ghouta has continued unabated, despite an order by Russia, an ally of the Syrian government, for a “humanitarian pause,” according to people on the ground there.

Before the meeting began, French ambassador Francois Delattre recalled that the rebels in Ghouta had said Tuesday they were ready to observe a ceasefire, but the Syrian regime has given no sign it is ready to do the same.

Beyond pounding Eastern Ghouta, the regime is conducting an offensive in the northwestern Idlib province, the only one that had remained completely out of its grip.

But Wael Alwan, the Istanbul-based spokesman for Failaq al-Rahman, one of the main rebel groups in eastern Ghouta, denied that the territory had been cut in half.

By April, the more than five-year siege was finally over as pro-government forces took full control of East Ghouta and tens of thousands of civilians and rebel fighters boarded evacuation buses north to opposition-held Idlib province.

Calls for cease-fires and humanitarian pauses have been ignored and the few aid convoys allowed into eastern Ghouta have had medical supplies removed before they depart for the rebel-held enclave.

Civilians have been evacuated from the besieged rebel-held Eastern Ghouta area outside Damascus for the first time since daily “humanitarian pauses” began on Tuesday, according to the Syrian Arab Red Crescent.