The Russian defence ministry has denied responsibility for an attack on a neighbourhood in the Syrian city of Aleppo which wounded a young boy whose rescue was filmed and shared widely on social media.
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It comes as Vladimir Putin’s bombers began flying missions in Syria from the Hamedan air base in Iran.
Another rebel official, Zakaria Malahifji of the Aleppo-based Fastaqim group, said the opposition had expressed its willingness to cooperate with a truce, but Russian warplanes had been bombing the city heavily since the morning.
The Russian defence ministry said in a statement Friday it never targets populated areas and that rebels themselves hit urban areas in order to derail humanitarian efforts there.
UN Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura welcomed Russia’s statement, saying he would work with Moscow to iron out specifics of a humanitarian pause in Aleppo.
Residents in the rebel-controlled half of the city celebrated earlier this month when rebels broke a month-long government siege that had led to drastic price increases and shortages of food and fuel, trapping some 300,000 people inside the city’s battered eastern neighborhoods.
The U.N. envoy for Syria says the United Nations will “count on” Moscow to help ensure that Russia-backed forces of Syrian President Bashar Assad will hold to a hoped-for 48-hour pause in fighting in Aleppo.
Hasaka is divided into zones of Kurdish and Syrian government control and fighting between them has killed dozens of civilians in the past 48 hours, YPG spokesman Redur Xelil said.
The YPG and the government have mostly avoided confrontation during the multi-sided war that has turned Syria into a patchwork of areas held by the state and an array of armed factions.
Escalating violence in and around the city, where Russian Federation and Iran are supporting bombing campaigns against the rebels, some of whom are backed by Arab and Western powers, caused the breakdown of peace talk in Geneva overseen by de Mistura. “But so far there are no details”.
The UN has repeatedly said that the escalation in fighting in August has prevented aid from reaching any of the 18 besieged areas and cities in Syria.
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“We urgently need a 48 hour ceasefire this week as a first step to get injured children out of Aleppo and bring aid in”.
