DAMASCUS, March 3 (Xinhua) -- The Syrian army released a video clip on Saturday, purporting to show two children managing to leave rebel-held Eastern Ghouta.
In the short video, also aired on the state TV, two Syrian soldiers were at the crossing point between the Wafidin area and Eastern Ghouta talking about two kids coming to their direction.
A boy and a girl, later said to be a brother and his sister, reached the soldiers, while crackles of gunfire started reverberating from behind, with white beams of bullets shining overhead.
In another sequence of the video, the two children were brought into a room, where officers tried to calm them down and asked them where they came from.
When asked about their parents, the kids said they were gunned down by the rebels.
However, activists in Ghouta slammed the video footage as "untrue."
On Friday, the Russian Reconciliation Center in Syria said two children succeeded in leaving Eastern Ghouta after midnight Friday through the designated humanitarian corridor in Wafidin area northeast of Damascus.
The center said Syrian soldiers monitored the movement of the two children and covered their evacuation as the rebels fired at them while they were leaving.
On Feb. 24, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 2401, which requires all parties in Syria to immediately cease clashes and provide a sustained humanitarian break for at least 30 days across the country.
Two days later, the Russians demanded a daily humanitarian pause for five hours in Eastern Ghouta specifically.
All these initiatives, however, have only slightly reduced the number of rebels' mortar shells on the capital and the Syrian airstrikes and bombardment on Eastern Ghouta.
Under the Russian initiative, a Pakistani couple is also said to have left Eastern Ghouta, while the humanitarian pause is on its fifth day with no breakthrough on the horizon.
