The World Health Organization (WHO) decried the Syrian regime on Monday for stripping a convoy of medical supplies before being granted access into the besieged Eastern Ghouta region. A WHO official said regime authorities had stripped most medical material from UN vehicles, preventing surgical kits, insulin, dialysis equipment and other supplies from reaching the enclave of 400,000 people. He told Reuters that regime officials had rejected 70 percent of the supplies it had prepared for the convoy, including “all trauma (kits), surgical, dialysis sessions and insulin”. Russia’s military said the rebels which control Eastern Ghouta had agreed to let civilians leave in return for aid. Bashar al-Assad vowed on Sunday to continue a military push into the biggest remaining opposition stronghold near Damascus, saying the offensive did not contradict five-hour ceasefires arranged each day by his main ally Russia. In comments broadcast by state television on Sunday, Assad dismissed Western statements about the humanitarian situation in Eastern Ghouta as “a ridiculous lie”. A senior United Nations official in Syria, who is accompanying an aid convoy attempting to enter the besieged Eastern Ghouta area, told Reuters on Monday he was "not really happy hearing the loud shelling that is around us". A wider, full ceasefire backed by the UN Security Council has not come into effect during the regime campaign, which began with massive regime air strikes two weeks ago and has continued in recent days with a ground assault. Moscow, a veto-wielding member at the Council, says the resolution does not apply to the rebel groups in Eastern Ghouta. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor, said the death toll from the offensive had exceeded 700 people in two weeks of intense bombardment on the densely populated region of farmland and towns. The area has been under siege by regime forces since 2013, and the UN had feared that people inside were running out of food and medicine even before the major assault began two weeks ago. Only one convoy of aid has reached the area so far in 2018, on February 14. A convoy sent by the Syrian Arab Red Crescent reached the crossing point into Eastern Ghouta early on Monday along with empty buses sent by the regime to evacuate civilians who might come out of the enclave, a Reuters witness said. The first vehicles from a second convoy sent by the United Nations arrived soon after, witness said. The UN’s aid agency OCHA said on Sunday it aimed to deliver a convoy with 46 truckloads of health, food and nutrition supplies to Eastern Ghouta on Monday. Pawel Krzysiek, a spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross, confirmed in a tweet on Monday that the convoy was indeed headed to Eastern Ghouta.