Assad regime airstrikes kill 7 near Damascus

The Britain-based monitor said five of the deaths, including the children, were in strikes on Ain Terma in the Eastern Ghouta region, the largest rebel enclave around the capital. 

The two other deaths were in Zamalka, which neighbours Ain Terma, the group said, adding that warplanes had carried out around 20 airstrikes on the two areas today. 

The strikes also injured at least 15 people, some of whom were in serious condition, the monitor said. 

In recent weeks, government forces have been heavily bombarding Ain Terma, which links the Eastern Ghouta area to the opposition-held Damascus neighbourhood of Jobar. 

They are pressing a military operation intended to try to sever Jobar from Eastern Ghouta, leaving it isolated. 

The Eastern Ghouta region is one of the areas covered in a ceasefire plan agreed in May by regime allies Russia and Iran, and rebel backer Turkey. 

But disagreements over how to monitor the four so-called "de-escalation zones" proposed by the plan have delayed its implementation. 

So far, just one of the zones is operational, in the south, where a ceasefire for the provinces of Daraa, Quneitra and Sweida began on July 9 and is largely holding.

The Syrian conflict began when the Baath regime, in power since 1963 and led by Hafez's son Bashar al-Assad, responded with military force to peaceful protests demanding democratic reforms during the Arab Spring wave of uprisings, triggering an armed rebellion fuelled by mass defections from the Syrian army.

According to independent monitors, hundreds of thousands of civilians have been killed in the war, mostly by the regime and its powerful allies, and millions have been displaced both inside and outside of Syria.