A Syrian civil defence volunteer carries a wounded child following a reported airstrike on the rebel-held neighbourhood of Qatirji in the northern city of Aleppo on July 23, 2016.
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Ibrahim Abu Laith said that regime warplanes dropped barrel bombs on residential areas in Aleppo city’s al-Mashhad neighborhood.
Syrian government forces on Tuesday seized a rebel-held neighbourhood in the northwest edge of Aleppo, tightening their siege of opposition-controlled parts of the city, a monitor said. Japan s Ambassador Koro Bessho, who holds the council presidency, said there was “overwhelming support for the idea” among the 15 council members.
“The global community simply can not let eastern Aleppo city become yet another – and by far the largest – besieged area”, he said, warning that “the clock is ticking” and urging the parties, and those with influence, to act now to establish a weekly, 48-hour humanitarian pause for eastern Aleppo city so that the United Nations and partners have safe, regular and sustained access to the quarter of a million people trapped behind the front lines.
“Health facilities in Syria are being attacked with alarming ferocity”, the statement said, citing the World Health Organization’s estimates of more than forty attacks this year.
Moscow and Washington are nominally co-chairs of global efforts to bring President Bashar al-Assad’s regime to the negotiating table with armed opposition groups.
US Secretary of State John Kerry held marathon meetings last week with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow.
The U.N. special envoy to Syria Staffan de Mistura said on Friday that he hopes to be able to hold new talks on Syria’s conflict in Geneva in August as concerns mount over humanitarian access to Aleppo.
One group was seen trying to extract medicine from what appeared to be the remains of a pharmacy or clinic.
It said a two-day-old baby was killed in the children’s hospital when his oxygen supply was cut after a raid during the early hours of Sunday.
The World Health Organisation said Syria was the most risky place for health care workers to operate a year ago, with 135 attacks on health facilities and workers in 2015.
The conflict generated “gargantuan levels of suffering” for civilians, and words are not adequate to depict the grim and gruesome reality for the people of Syria today, he said.
He said rescuers had managed to pull one boy alive from the rubble, but the rest of his family were dead and still trapped beneath the remains of a collapsed building.
“Just last Sunday, two days ago, the Russian and the Syrian regime air forces bombarded the six remaining hospitals and medical facilities in [the city]”, Farah al-Atassi, of the opposition’s High Negotiations Committee (HNC), told Al Jazeera on Tuesday.
Britain, France and the United States on Monday backed a UN call for a humanitarian truce in Aleppo after four hospitals were bombed and civilians were killed by air strikes in the Syrian city.
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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SANA also reported that the Syrian army on Monday carried out operations against opposition fighters in areas across the country, including the provinces of Aleppo, Deraa, Deir Az Zor, Hama and Homs.
