At least 40 people were killed on Friday in Syrian regime air strikes on the town of Kfar Batna in the besieged Eastern Ghouta. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights put the death toll at 46, as the Syrian Civil Defense search-and-rescue group said it has identified 42 bodies so far. The Observatory said Kfar Batna was hit with cluster munitions, napalm-like incendiary weapons and conventional explosives on Friday. A medical charity supporting hospitals in the Ghouta region, the Syrian American Medical Society, said doctors in Kafr Batna are treating patients for severe burn wounds. The charity said it recorded 40 casualties on Friday. The Syrian Civil Defense expected the death toll to rise. Regime forces are advancing on towns inside the rebel-held enclave, prompting a massive exodus of civilians. The Syrian war entered its eighth year this week having killed half a million people and driven more than 11 million from their homes, including nearly 6 million who have fled abroad in one of the worst refugee crises of modern times. Backed by Russia and Iran, regime forces have thrust deep into Eastern Ghouta, splintering the area into three separate enclaves. The United Nations believes up to 400,000 people have been trapped inside the rebel-held area of densely populated farms and satellite towns on the outskirts of the capital, with virtually no access to food or medicine. Moscow and Damascus accuse the rebels of having forced people to stay in harm’s way to use them as human shields. The rebels deny this and say the aim of the regime assault is to depopulate opposition areas. The Russian military said that 4,127 people had left Eastern Ghouta on Friday, the TASS news agency reported, citing a senior military official. "As of now, 4,127 people have left the area. They are mainly old people, women and children," Russian Major General Vladimir Zolotukhin was cited as saying by the agency. The Observatory put the early figure at several hundred. Many thousands fled the southernmost of the three Ghouta pockets on Thursday, the first mass exodus from the area since the regime unleashed one of the deadliest offensives of the war. Russia said more than 12,000 people left on Thursday. Syrian state TV showed footage of men women and children it said had left the enclave through a corridor in the town of Hammouriyeh on Friday. The UN childrens fund UNICEF has response plans in place to cope with 50,000 people coming out of Eastern Ghouta, spokeswoman Marixie Mercado told a UN briefing in Geneva on Friday. "We have been working, planning to respond to evacuations for a while and specifically to provide shelters with emergency assistance," she said. "Our response plans cover up to 50,000 people." The Eastern Ghouta town of Douma, where many people are sheltering, has been spared the worst of the shelling in recent days, a resident said. The Ghouta campaign has continued despite a UN Security Council demand for a ceasefire. Moscow and Damascus argue the enemies they target in Ghouta are terrorists unprotected by the truce. The foreign ministers of Turkey, Iran and Russia convened a meeting in the Kazakh capital Astana to discuss the situation in Syria. The three states last year agreed to contain the conflict on several fronts with “de-escalation zones”, while simultaneously pursuing own military objectives in Syria. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov announced the Russian military and the Syrian regime are extending the ceasefire Eastern Ghouta as long as it takes to allow all the civilians to leave the area. Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu meanwhile stated that the situation in Eastern Ghouta is heading towards disaster and clashes must end.