Militant forces allied with rebels attacked government forces south and southwest of Aleppo on Sunday in a bid to ease the siege of Syria’s second city, rebels and a monitor said.
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In comments carried later Friday by Russia’s Interfax news agency, deputy defense minister Anatoly Antonov said that Russian Federation was willing to work with the United Nations on setting up the corridors.
Moscow and Damascus say they’ve set up “safe corridors” to evacuate people trapped in opposition-held areas.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said the hospital strike killed a pharmacist and put the facility out of service. Syrian TV also showed some rebels surrendering to Syrian government troops.
On Saturday, government media reported that dozens of civilians and rebels had left besieged eastern Aleppo through the humanitarian corridors, but residents there and rebels dismissed the claims as “lies”. Earlier in the day, helicopters dropped unguided barrel bombs on the opposition-controlled neighborhood of Bustan al-Basha, it said. He said he is awaiting clarification from Russian authorities about that plan, noting the urgent situation in the northern city, wracked by devastating violence in recent months. It said the hospital was no longer operational.
The Syrian government has set up six shelters that can accommodate at least 3,000 people, he said. Observatory chief Rami Adurrahman said another 13 people were killed in the strikes but that he could not say if they were IS fighters or civilians.
It said that “a number” of women over the age of 40 had left in addition to the families and were taken to shelters.
The global coalition had no immediate comment on the casualty figures reported by the Observatory.
A handout image released by the worldwide NGO Save the Children on July 29, 2016 reportedly shows people gathering around the area of a damaged building of a maternity hospital supported by the NGO after it was hit by an air raid in the rebel-held town of Kafar Takharim, in Idlib province of northwest Syria. Late Thursday, the US Central Command, which is responsible for US forces in the Middle East, said in a statement that the American-backed coalition had conducted airstrikes in the area of Manbij during the past 24 hours and that it was looking into whether an airstrike had resulted in civilian casualties.
Hamoud Almousa, a founding member of activist group Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently, said the Islamic State sought retribution from the village for “not defending Islam” when the Democratic Forces initially drove out the Islamic State earlier this summer.
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Information for this article was contributed by Albert Aji and Lynn Berry of The Associated Press.
