United Nations envoy Staffan de Mistura has long called for a 48-hour halt in fighting each week to allow aid delivery and medical evacuations from both rebel-held eastern and government-controlled western Aleppo.
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Russian warships in the past have launched cruise missiles at targets in Syria from both the Caspian Sea and the Mediterranean, a show of the navy’s long-range precision strike capability.
“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.
Some two million people on both sides of the divided city have been without running water for almost two weeks after infrastructure was damaged by bombing earlier this month.
Aleppo, strategically located near Syria’s border with Turkey, is Syria’s largest city and was once an economic hub.
These were rebelbesieged Foua and Kefraya in Idlib province, and government-besieged Madaya and Zabadani near Damascus.
Sources in the Turkish government have said that Erdogan will visit Iran to follow up on a series of cooperation among Ankara, Tehran and Moscow over the ongoing Syrian crisis, Tasnim news agency reported August 19. The boy was treated for a head injury and survived. Since then, Russian Federation and Syria have stepped up air bombardments of insurgent-held areas in the battered city.
The upsurge in fighting and airstrikes in and around the city, split between government-held west and rebel-held eastern sectors, has prompted growing worldwide concern, galvanised by pictures on Thursday of a dazed, bloodied child. The video was shot on Wednesday in the rebel-held al- Qaterji neighborhood of the city. He was handed the boy and he passed him to a rescue worker who took him to a nearby ambulance. A man with blood on his face then joins them. Omran and his family were treated at a local hospital and released.
More than 10 tweets were posted every minute on Twitter with the hashtag, according to social media analytics company Zoomph.
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Last year, global sympathy for victims of Syria’s war was heightened by a photo of a drowned 3-year-old refugee from Syria, Aylan Kurdi, who washed up on a Turkish tourist beach.
