Bombardment kills at least 37 civilians in eastern Ghouta

Russian air strikes killed 37 civilians in the Arbin area of the shrinking rebel enclave of eastern Ghouta near Damascus overnight, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Friday.

"Russian air strikes and incendiary weapons killed the civilians in a basement from burning or suffocation" late on Thursday before a ceasefire came into effect in the area, Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman said.

Russia has denied being directly involved in air strikes on eastern Ghouta.

The Britain-based Observatory says it relies on flight patterns, aircraft involved and ammunition used to determine who carries them out.

The White Helmets, a civil defence organisation operating in rebel-held areas, said most of the dead were women and children.

In an image they shared on social media, rescue workers wrapped a blackened body in a blanket.

More than 1,600 civilians have died in eastern Ghouta since the regime launched a blistering assault on the last rebel bastion near Damascus on February 18, the Observatory says.

The offensive has retaken most of the enclave and divided what remains into three shrinking pockets, each controlled by a different rebel group.

Late on Thursday, the Faylaq al Rahman group which controls the southern pocket that includes Arbin, announced that a ceasefire had been agreed from 22:00 GMT (midnight local time) to allow negotiations with Russia for an evacuation deal.

Under a similar agreement reached by the Ahrar al Sham group, hundreds of rebel fighters and their family members were evacuated from the town of Harasta earlier on Thursday.

The ceasefire announcement came after air strikes killed 38 people in Arbin and Zamalka, another town controlled by Faylaq al Rahman, earlier on Thursday, the Observatory said.

Civilians, rebels arrive in Idlib

Hundreds of fighters evacuated by the Syrian regime from their eastern Ghouta bastion arrived in rebel-held Idlib province on Friday, a monitor said.

Buses carrying the fighters and their families entered the northwestern province after their evacuation from the rebel-held town of Harasta in eastern Ghouta on Thursday, the Observatory said.

An AFP reporter at a camp for the displaced in the Maaret al Ikhwan area in the north of Idlib province saw some of the evacuees arrive.

Families entered the camp but the fighters were not allowed in, he said.

Before dawn, some 400 fighters and hundreds of civilians on buses and ambulances had stopped in the town of Qalat al Madiq in Hama province to the south, the Observatory said.

Among them was a man who had died of his injuries on the way, said the monitor, which relies on a wide network source inside Syria for its information.

Harasta evacuation

The AFP reporter saw hundreds of people on buses draw into Qalat al Madiq, where rebel fighters and members of the Red Crescent and of the White Helmets civil defence organisation were waiting.

The evacuation from Harasta comes after pro-regime forces launched a blistering air and ground offensive on eastern Ghouta, the last rebel bastion near Damascus, on February 18.

The assault has retaken 80 percent of the enclave, the Observatory says, and divided what remains into three shrinking pockets, each controlled by a different rebel group.

The evacuation of rebels from Harasta could empty the smallest of these pockets and pile pressure on those controlling the two other to accept similar deals.

Eastern Ghouta is within mortar range of central Damascus, and the evacuation deal could be a major first step in the regime's efforts towards securing the capital.

The one-month offensive on eastern Ghouta has killed more than 1,500 civilians, the Observatory says, and caused tens of thousands to flee into regime-held areas.

More than 350,000 people have been killed in the Syrian conflict since it broke out in 2011 with the brutal repression of anti-regime protests.