Syria regime strikes rebel enclave as aid trucks wait

– Chemical probe push –

Washington is asking the UN Security Council to set up a new inquiry of chemical weapons attacks in Syria following 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.

It was unclear when the US proposal, or a separate Russian draft resolution, on the Syrian chemical inquiry would come to a vote.

The Observatory said a child suffocated to death and 13 other people fell ill from a suspected chlorine attack on Sunday in the besieged enclave.

A joint Syrian and Russian air campaign, which was launch on February 18, killed up to 100 civilians a day until the Russian “humanitarian pause” was announced this week.

But the death toll has continued to mount.

In the town of Hazeh, rescuers working with rudimentary equipment were painstakingly hoisting buckets of gravel from a basement where they feared up to 21 were buried alive by a strike on February 20.

They have only retrieved six bodies so far.

“I left my daughter in the basement with her husband and his family,” said 60-year-old Abu Mohamed.

“I came back the next morning. I found the building collapsed and until now I haven’t found my daughter nor her husband’s family.”

According to the UN, three quarters of all private housing in Eastern Ghouta have been damaged and hundreds of civilian need life-saving medical evacuations.