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'Hell on Earth': Eastern Ghouta

How far have government forces advanced into eastern Ghouta?
According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitoring group, Syrian President Bashar Assad's forces now control over 70 percent of the eastern Ghouta enclave. After stepping up its onslaught on the region around month ago, Syrian troops have:

• Effectively splintered Eastern Ghouta three separate pockets, thereby isolating key rebel-held areas
• Seized several key towns in the region, including Hammuriyeh, as well as swathes of farmland and factories
• Captured the main road connecting eastern Ghouta's two largest towns, Douma and Harasta, and cutting them off from the rest of the region
• Killed just over 1,200 people, including some 250, children in what has widely been denounced as an indiscriminate shelling campaign, backed up by Russian air support

Read more: Eastern Ghouta tragedy pits neighbors against each other
At least '800 people fleeing every hour'
Abdel-Rahman, the head of the Syrian Observatory said that Thursday marked the "largest exodus from the region since it fell under government siege."
Russian military general Vladimir Zolotukhin was quoted as saying that "every hour, over 800 people are leaving."
On the ground, a Syrian officer in government-held territory said he welcomed the fleeing civilians from eastern Ghouta. "Praise God...the families are coming out to suitable locations to the state's embrace," he said.

The rush to deliver aid: Despite Thursday's exodus, some 400,000 people remain trapped in eastern Ghouta, as aid agencies scramble to deliver food and medicine to besieged areas.
On Thursday, a 25-truck convoy entered the isolated town of Douma with food supplies for some 26,000 hunger-stricken residents.  "This is just a little of what these families need," said the International Committee of the Red Cross, one of the bodies organizing aid deliveries to the region.
Earlier this week, sick residents from Douma were allowed to evacuate to Damascus to receive medical treatment.
'Hell on Earth': The United Nations has made repeated demands for the Syrian government to halt its brutal advance into eastern Ghouta, describing the region as "hell of Earth."
However, those demands have fallen on deaf ears, as Assad appears committed to rooting out all rebel forces from the region, which sits just to the east of Damascus.

• Assault on eastern Ghouta, Syria in pictures

  A week of airstrikes

  More than 500 people have been killed so far in one of the most ferocious attacks on eastern Ghouta near Damascus since the conflict began in 2011. President Bashar Assad's forces continued their assault on eastern Ghouta despite a UN resolution demanding a 30-day ceasefire, as well as a five-hour daily "pause" ordered by President Vladimir Putin, the Syrian regime's main ally.