Siege of eastern Ghouta

Candidate for the post of President of the Syrian Arab Republic, Bashar al-Assad and his wife cast their votes at a polling station in the Municipality Council of Douma city in Damascus countryside.

The Syrian regime has drawn global outrage after claims it used chemical weapons in the besieged town of Douma in Eastern Ghouta on April 7 that killed at least 42 civilians, with Turkey also raising strong criticism.

The chemical attack on a rebel-held town in eastern Ghouta killed dozens of people, a medical relief organization and a rescue service said, and Washington said the reports - if confirmed - would demand an immediate international response, Reuters reported.

Pressure was mounting on March 28 for rebels to accept a negotiated withdrawal from their final holdout in Syria's Eastern Ghouta, as hundreds boarded buses to leave another part of the battered enclave.

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.

Seventeen civilians - 15 children and two women - were killed and more than 50 people were injured in an air strike in the Syrian insurgency enclave near the capital, Damascus Eastern Ghouta, the France press and Reuters reported, referring to the Syrian Human Rights Watch.

An aid convoy began to cross into Syria’s eastern Ghouta March 5, bringing the first relief to the besieged enclave since one of the deadliest government assaults of the seven-year war began two weeks ago, but stripped of vital medical supplies.