The European Union’s top diplomat, Federica Mogherini, also called for an immediate halt to fighting in Aleppo to allow for medical evacuations, aid deliveries and necessary repairs to water and electricity infrastructure.
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Aleppo, split into rebel and government-controlled areas, has become the current focal point of the Syrian war.
Syrian opposition activists and a Kurdish spokesman say that Syrian government warplanes have bombed Kurdish-controlled areas in northern Syria, a first in Syria’s civil war.
The video was shot yesterday in the rebel-held al-Qaterji neighbourhood of the city.
Since the image’s release, the photo has reverberated around the globe, much like that of three-year-old Aylan Kurdi, whose body washed ashore on a Turkish beach past year.
Citing “deep unhappiness”, United Nations envoy Staffan de Mistura abruptly cut short Thursday’s meeting of the UN’s humanitarian task force for Syria because new fighting in the five-year war has impeded aid convoys to the more than 590,000 people living in besieged cities and towns.
Russian Federation has told the United Nations it would support a 48-hour ceasefire in the Syrian city of Aleppo from early next week, but details have yet to be negotiated, a Western diplomat said on Thursday.
“Not one single convoy in one month has reached any of the humanitarian besieged areas not one single convoy”, de Mistura, who chairs the task force, told reporters.
Aleppo, Syria’s second city and former economic hub, has emerged as a top concern for the United Nations and aid agencies since regime troops seized control of the last supply route into rebel-held areas in mid-July.
“Today I suspended the meeting as a symbol of deep concern and as a sign of respect towards the World Humanitarian Day tomorrow”, Staffan de Mistura explained after the shortest ever meeting between humanitarian taskforce members who convene here on a weekly basis Thursday morning.
But the movement of convoys has primarily been hampered by restrictions imposed by the Assad regime.
On Tuesday August 16, Russian long-range Tu-22M3 bombers and Su-34 tactical bombers delivered airstrikes in Syria in Aleppo, Deir-ez-Zor and Idlib provinces against installations of Islamic State terrorists (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL), taking off from Hamadan Airbase in western Iran.
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Since then, more than a quarter of a million people have been killed and more than 10 million displaced across the war-battered country, according to United Nations figures.
