The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights also said seven people were killed in heavy rebel shelling of government-held areas of Aleppo, which was not one of areas where temporary truces were announced last week.
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“Iran continues to withdraw some of its more elite forces from Syria and replace them with troops of lower caliber”, a USA intelligence official told VOA.
A coalition of opposition groups fighting under the name “Fatah Halab” – or Aleppo Conquest – launched the assault on President Bashar al-Assad’s forces with a tunnel bomb on Tuesday. Activist groups said it was not clear if the warplanes were Russian or those of the US -led coalition.
The mounting death toll in Aleppo has stirred global outrage and concern that Syria’s civil war could be tumbling into a new round of bloodshed and humanitarian misery.
After a relative lull Monday, May 2, and early Tuesday, rebels in eastern Aleppo fired at least 65 rockets into government-controlled neighborhoods, said Syrian state news agency SANA.
Kerry said in Washington that an accord renewing a partial ceasefire nationwide should come “as soon as possible”.
In Moscow, de Mistura said he hoped to get a so-called “cessation of hostilities” back on track after a week of carnage all but collapsed the USA – and Russian-backed cease-fire in Syria.
At least three people died Tuesday when a rocket heavily damaged a hospital in the embattled Syrian city of Aleppo.
Rescue workers said air strikes on eastern neighbourhoods killed at least two people.
The Security Council meeting to discuss the bloodshed, which is threatening to derail global peace efforts to end the five-year war in Syria, was called for by France and Britain.
Rockets fired by rebel fighters on a government hospital in Aleppo left dozens dead and wounded yesterday, as tit-for-tat violence escalated in the city.
The envoy, Staffan de Mistura, met Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov a day after meeting USA secretary of state John Kerry in Geneva.
“. We need some clear feeling that the Syrians can believe (in) that the cessation of hostilities is back on track”.
The U.S. and key allies have repeatedly said the Syrian leader can not be part of a long-term political solution to the crisis.
The truce, brokered by Russian Federation and the United States, went into effect in late February in a bid to facilitate negotiations between the warring sides to the conflict.
Aleppo has been the scene of the worst surge in fighting in recent days, wrecking the first major ceasefire of the five-year-old civil war, sponsored by the United States and Russian Federation, which had held since February.
“I am hoping that in the near future, maybe even in the next few hours, such a decision will be announced”, Lavrov said after meeting UN Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura in Moscow.
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Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, held talks with the United Nations envoy, Staffan de Mistura, who had flown to Moscow after crisis meetings in Geneva with John Kerry, the USA secretary of state, and the Saudi and Jordanian foreign ministers. “That, I think, is unconscionable and it really has to stop”, he said.
