Damascus

The European Union and the United Nations called on April 24 for swift political talks to end the long war in Syria, saying the latest territorial gains by Damascus and its allies had not brought peace any closer.

Inspectors from the OPCW chemical watchdog will begin their investigation on April 15 at the site of an alleged chemical attack near Damascus, Agence France-Presse reported, citing a senior official.

The 18th convoy carrying civilians and opposition fighters from the city of Douma in the Damascus suburb of Eastern Ghouta arrived in Aleppo's Al-Bab district on April 11, according to state-run Anadolu Agency correspondents on the ground.

The group in control of the last rebel bastion near Damascus appeared on April 1 to have agreed a deal for its fighters to make peace with the government or quit the Eastern Ghouta enclave, Syrian state media said on Aprl 1.

Thousands of people departed eastern Ghouta for Syrian rebel territory near the Turkish border on March 27, the third group to leave under a deal brokered by Russia to surrender the enclave near Damascus to the Syrian government.

Residents of a ravaged pocket of Syria's Eastern Ghouta were preparing for a new round of evacuations from the rebel enclave near Damascus, AFP reported on March 25.

.Syrian rebels and their families began leaving Syria's Eastern Ghouta on March 22 under the first evacuation deal in the shrinking opposition enclave outside Damascus.

Rockets fired on a market in a government-controlled neighborhood of Damascus on March 20 killed 35 people and wounded more than 20 others, Syrian state-run media said, marking one of the highest death tolls in a single attack targeting the capital.

At least 40 civilians were killed March 16 and hundreds more injured when Syrian regime and Russian warplanes struck a crowded market in Eastern Ghouta, an opposition-held Damascus suburb.

More than 1,000 people, mostly women and children, are in urgent need of medical evacuations from Syria's besieged enclave of Eastern Ghouta, the United Nations said on Monday, cited by AFP .