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30 killed in Russian Federation raids on IS Syria bastion Raqqa: monitor

Cavusoglu also announced that his country will resume its airstrikes against IS targets in Syria, months after they were suspended amid a major row with Moscow.

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The Russian military is fighting alongside Syrian government forces in the civil war.

“Clearly, from our point of view, we’re simply there to meet the need, all the need.”, O’Brien said.

“On the issue of Daesh, we have made a call to Russian Federation. We’ve got used to living this way”, he said.

The almost monthlong government siege of Syria’s largest city is now on the verge of collapse, after a week of heavy fighting in northern and eastern Aleppo led to the defeat of pro-regime forces by a coalition of Syrian opposition groups.

Rebel bombardments of Hamdaniya on Wednesday killed more than a dozen people, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said.

Syrian’s state news agency said army troops seized territory south of Aleppo today, adding that rebel fire killed four civilians in a government-held district.

Russian Federation said the raids destroyed a “chemical weapons factory” as well as a weapons storage facility and IS training camp.

Mr Johnson said: “While the siege has been broken, the Assad regime and Russian Federation continue to bombard parts of the city and I am particularly concerned by reports of chlorine gas attacks which if proven, would be utterly abhorrent”.

A civilian breathes through an oxygen mask at al-Quds hospital, after a gas, believed to be chlorine, was dropped alongside barrel bombs on a neighbourhood of the Syrian city of Aleppo.

Wissam Zarqa, a local resident, described gasping for breath and cowering with his family on the top floors of their apartment building as a gas filled the hallway.

Syria officially agreed to give up its weapons stockpile following a 2013 sarin gas assault on a Damascus suburb.

Russia’s defense ministry on Wednesday said it would hold fire around Syria’s ravaged city of Aleppo for three hours each day to allow humanitarian aid in, an initiative the United Nations said is insufficient to meet the city’s needs.

The letter from the doctors ends with a plea for help: “We do not need tears or sympathy or even prayers, we need your action”.

Speaking at a televised briefing, Lieutenant-General Sergei Rudskoi, a senior Russian Defence Ministry official, said the pause in fighting would run from 10 a.m.to 1 p.m. local time.

Government and opposition forces have both denied using chemical weapons during Syria’s conflict. The report, which was posted online on Thursday, Aug. 11, could not be independently verified and it was not clear how it was determined that chlorine gas was released.

It has also raised fears of the encirclement of the entire civilian population.

Two men reported a strong smell of gas and said they saw barrel bombs before people began to suffer breathing and eye problems.

“This is to ensure that all interested organizations have the opportunity to deliver their humanitarian assistance to the residents of Aleppo”, Rudskoi said. He felt his eyes burning and had difficulty breathing.

Wissam Zarqa says via a messaging service that he is at “home and I don’t dare to leave – the jets are not letting up”.

If it was chlorine gas, this wouldn’t be the first timethe Syrian regime was accused of using chemicals in attacks that injured and killed civilians.

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Kafr Hamra is close to the northern front line in the deeply divided city of Aleppo, where government troops have sealed the main route into opposition areas, effectively trapping almost 300,000 residents.

Syria: Suspected Chlorine Gas Attack In Aleppo