The International Committee for the Red Cross announced on Tuesday that it suspended its aid delivery in Syria’s Eastern Ghouta a day earlier due to the ongoing violence in the besieged enclave.
Ingy Sedky, the ICRC spokeswoman in Syria said most of the aid from a 46-truck convoy was delivered to the town of Douma in Eastern Ghouta on Monday but the mission was cut short before the rest of the supplies could be unloaded.
Iyad Abdelaziz, a member of the Douma Local Council, said nine aid trucks had to leave the area after regime shelling and airstrikes intensified in the evening.
The United Nations said that it planned to send another aid convoy on Thursday.
Monday's shipment was the first to enter eastern Ghouta amid weeks of a crippling siege and a regime assault that has killed hundreds.
The latest figures UN figures said that 1,000 children have been killed in Syria this year.
On Tuesday, at least nine civilians were killed in Eastern Ghouta as fresh regime air strikes and clashes shook the enclave outside Damascus, a monitor and AFP correspondents said.
Regime air strikes killed nine civilians in the town of Jisreen, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor said.
With the latest deaths, 95 civilians have been killed in regime bombardment of the battered enclave since early Monday, it said.
Russian-backed regime troops have advanced steadily since launching an assault on the last major rebel stronghold near the capital on February 18.
As of early Tuesday they controlled around 40 percent of the enclave after seizing a further area overnight, the Observatory said.
It reported clashes Tuesday in the northeast, center and southeast of the enclave.
In total more than 780 civilians -- including 170 children -- have been killed in Eastern Ghouta since February 18, according to the Observatory.
The enclave's 400,000 residents have been living under siege since 2013, facing severe food and medicine shortages even before the latest onslaught. Aid deliveries on Monday had to be cut short amid continued fighting.
Regime warplanes continued to pound Eastern Ghouta including the main town of Douma early Tuesday, as well as the towns of Sabqa and Hammuriyeh overnight, the Observatory said.
The strikes on Douma reduced homes to piles of rubble on the sides of roads, an AFP correspondent there said.
An AFP reporter in Hammuriyeh said air strikes overnight targeted the town, with only a few residents emerging from the safety of their cellars after day broke.
Late Monday, the Observatory reported 18 people suffered breathing difficulties following a strike by a military aircraft in Hammuriyeh, without being able to specify the cause of the illnesses.
The regime has been accused of using chemical weapons in its attacks, prompting the Kremlin to issue a denial on Tuesday.
It condemned what it called unfounded allegations of the use of chemical weapons, insisting that the country's stockpile was destroyed under international supervision.
"The provocations are continuing that spawn such insinuations and unfounded accusations against the Syrian leadership," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists.
Damascus and its key ally Moscow face growing pressure after reports last month of suspected chlorine use in Eastern Ghouta.
More than 340,000 people have been killed in Syria since the start of the war in 2011 with the brutal repression of anti-regime protests.
