“Today in the meeting the Russian delegation confirmed their willingness to sit down with us (Thursday and Friday) to try to agree on a workable humanitarian pause for us to go the Aleppo road way to help the poor people of east as well as in the west”, United Nations humanitarian adviser Jan Egeland told reporters.
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“The U.S. has repeatedly condemned indiscriminate bombing of medical facilities by the Assad regime in Aleppo and elsewhere in Syria”.
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”.
Syria Civil Defence, a rescue service operating in rebel-held parts of Syria, said they had recorded three deaths and 22 injured.
“This attack in Aleppo is yet another flagrant violation of worldwide humanitarian law and signals a distressing pattern in the use of chemical weapons by regime forces”, said Magdalena Mughrabi, Amnesty International’s Deputy Director of the Middle East and North Africa Programme.
Russia’s intervention past year helped turn the war in Assad’s favor.
Last week, rebels broke a month-long government siege in the city’s east, where an estimated 250,000 people are believed to be trapped. His forces with the help of Lebanese Hezbollah and Iranian fighters surrounded the eastern, opposition-held neighbourhoods in Aleppo in July.
Aleppo has been mired in intense fighting, with the Syrian army and local militia forces having managed to encircled large groups of militants in eastern districts of Aleppo.
Moreover, attacks on civilian infrastructure had left more than two million people without electricity or access to the public water network for several days, it added.
“There were people who had already been displaced sheltering in nearby areas, they had to leave”, the 61-year-old agricultural engineer said via telephone.
Human Rights Watch said it had documented six strikes by regime or Russian warplanes on health facilities in the north that killed 17 people in the past two weeks.
Further east, Russian raids hit the IS stronghold of Raqa, killing at least 24 civilians and wounding 70 people, said the Observatory.
Abdul-Khafi al Hamdo who regularly sends eye witness accounts from inside Aleppo for ITV News, went to the scene by daylight. “It was a miracle”, said Bibars Mishal, a colleague of Harah in Aleppo.
“There were some problems with petrol and fuel, but supplies came in and the petrol stations are open and working”, Tony Ishaq, 26, said via internet messenger.
Global medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres, which supports a number of medical facilities in the opposition held sector, said the casualty toll had risen sharply.
The United Nations said on Tuesday the main power facility that allowed water to be pumped to both sides of the city had been hit, leaving the entire population of almost 2 million without running water and putting children at risk of disease.
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De Mistura also said that senior military officials from Russian Federation and the United States are still working on restoring an overall ceasefire after five years of civil war that has killed a quarter of a million people and displaced 11 million.
