Shelling has killed many people in Syria's Eastern Ghouta, according to a monitoring group, just hours before the UN announced that Syria's regime had agreed to a ceasefire in the opposition-held area, after days of intense bombardment.

The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) reported the death toll, a day after air raids in the besieged district on the outskirts of Damascus killed at least 19 people.

The report came as opposition delegates gathered in Geneva on Tuesday for a new round of UN-sponsored talks.

Regime representatives were expected to arrive in the Swiss city on Wednesday.

However, there is little optimism for progress towards ending the Syrian conflict, now in its seventh year.

Russian proposal

Staffan de Mistura, the UN envoy for Syria, said in Geneva the regime of Bashar al-Assad had agreed to a Russian plan for a truce in the opposition-controlled enclave.

"Russia has proposed and the government has accepted a ceasefire in Eastern Ghouta," he said, noting that he learned of the proposal from a Russian ambassador, during an earlier meeting of envoys from the five Security Council permanent representatives: the UK, US, France, China and Russia.

"Now we need to see whether this [ceasefire] takes place, but it is not coincidental that this was actually proposed and agreed upon just the day of the beginning of this session [in Geneva]," he added.

Al Jazeera's James Bays, reporting from Geneva, said the opposition delegates there are "likely to welcome" the ceasefire in Eastern Ghouta.

"There really is, at the moment, only one side that is involved in military action there, and that is the Syrian government with their onslaught, their aerial bombardment that has been going on for days and days now and causing such agony for the people there," he said.

Attacks on Eastern Ghouta over the past two weeks have killed more than 100 people, according to SOHR, which monitors developments in Syria's conflict via a network of sources on the ground.

De-escalation zone

Eastern Ghouta was hit even though it was listed as a "de-escalation zone", where military activity is prohibited under an agreement endorsed by Turkey, Russia, and Iran, in separate talks with Syrian regime and opposition delegates in Kazakhstan's capital, Astana.

Opposition in Eastern Ghouta have managed to keep Syrian regime military forces at bay during years of war; however, a regime siege of the district has led to a humanitarian crisis with severe shortages of food and medicine.

After months of stalemate, the eighth round of the Geneva talks is expected to focus primarily on a new constitution and elections, two of the four so-called "baskets" of reforms laid out by the UN for a political settlement to the Syria crisis.

PHOTO CAPTION

Syrian regime soldiers stand near a vehicle in Arima village west of Manbij city, in Aleppo Governorate, Syria March 9, 2017. REUTERS

Al-Jazeera