Syria’s regime intensified air strikes on rebel-held areas of Aleppo province Monday, killing 22 people and again threatening key hospitals, said the British daily the Guardian.
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The World Health Organisation said Syria was the most unsafe place for health care workers to operate past year.
Pawel Krzysiek, the head of communications for the ICRC in Syria, said a 24-truck convoy entered the besieged rebel-held suburb of Moadamiyeh to deliver food for 40,000 people and essential health supplies for local facilities, in addition to non-food items and nutritional products.
The IDA statement said its specialized hospital for children wouldn’t reopen until it can be assured of its protection.
“For over two weeks, the Assad regime, Russian Federation and Iran have mercilessly raided Aleppo city and forced its civilian population to flee”, he said.
The bombings reduce medical access to native residents of Atareb and displaced Syrians from Aleppo, Hama and Homs, who also reside in the city.
He stressed the importance of rebuilding the momentum created in the first half of the year, in particular by the humanitarian task force of the International Syria Support Group (ISSG) – consisting of the United Nations, the Arab League, the European Union and 18 countries that have been working on a way forward since late last year.
Last week US Secretary of State John Kerry and his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov agreed on “concrete steps” to salvage the failing truce and fight jihadist factions, without announcing details.
An AFP journalist at the scene of one of the attacks in the al Mashhad neighbourhood said civil defence workers were struggling to retrieve survivors who were trapped under heavy pieces of debris.
The Independent Doctor’s Association (IDA), a group of Syrian doctors that support clinics in Aleppo, allege that a two-day-old baby died after a government strike on a children’s hospital.
Pro-government forces have surrounded the rebel-held eastern half of Aleppo for more than 15 days, in an attempt to take full control of the strongest rebel bastion in the country’s north, Al Jazeera reports.
One boy was pulled out alive but the rest of his family were killed and their bodies remained under a collapsed building, he added.
The two areas have been used by rebels to launch rockets into government-held districts in the west of the city.
Syria’s most populous city before the war, Aleppo has been divided for years between rebel and government-held zones. “The Castello road, a vital route for food, medicine and supplies, is cut off …”
SANA also quoted an unnamed foreign ministry official as saying that the government is ready for a new round of peace talks “without preconditions”.
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Three women were among those killed in the attack, the latest in an endless cycle of mortar shelling by rebels against government-controlled areas in Aleppo, the source said on condition of anonymity.
