Kerry says, “We can’t go out to the world and say we have an agreement when we don’t”.
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Opposition activists accused the Syrian government and its Russian ally of dropping incendiary bombs as volunteer firefighters battled to contain the blazes in the already devastated city.
A senior U.S. State Department official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told reporters: “The ball is very much in the Russians’ court to come back to us with some ideas that are serious, that would be above and beyond the types of things they have been willing to agree to in the past with regard to air activities over large parts of Syria”.
A spokesman for the Nour el-Din el-Zinki rebel factions in the city says government forces have not been able to make any advances in the city in the last 24 hours.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported at least 30 air strikes had targeted different areas of Aleppo from midnight.
The 250,000 residents of east Aleppo, which rebels have held since 2012, have been living under government siege since early September.
Fresh details of the horror from a night of intense bombardment emerged on Thursday, including the death of a family of seven in Aleppo’s al-Kallaseh neighbourhood on Wednesday night.
The conflict in Syria has cost more than 300,000 lives since 2011, during which time more than half the population have been uprooted from their homes.
On September 9, Kerry and Lavrov met in Geneva and agreed to call a ceasefire, with Moscow responsible for forcing Assad’s forces to stand down and allow in United Nations aid convoys.
Diplomats believe the US-Russian Geneva process is the only available hope to end the five-year conflict, but Moscow and Washington have fallen out spectacularly.
The U.S. accuses Russia of airstrikes Monday that struck an global aid convoy near Aleppo; Moscow has offered several explanations for how it believes that strike may have occurred, but has denied Russian or Syrian forces conducted it.
“The good news is that Russian Federation and the US agreed to work intensely on a possible restoration of it”, U.N. Syria mediator Staffan de Mistura told reporters.
After the meeting broke up, Mr Kerry said he was ready to meet Mr Lavrov again to see if anything could be done. “If we do not succeed in doing this one way or the other, this catastrophic situation is going to get even worse”.
The UN on Thursday warned that 40 trucks of food languishing at the Turkish-Syrian border, waiting for permission from the Syrian regime, will be expiring next Monday.
An airstrike on Monday destroyed a Syrian Arab Red Crescent (SARC) aid convoy in Urum al-Kubra, west of Aleppo, prompting the United Nations to halt its aid operations in Syria.
At the UN, Assad’s other major supporter also rejected the US-led call for aircraft to be grounded.
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Ramzy Ezzeldin Ramzy said De Mistura is in talks with the parties to organize “direct negotiations”, a departure from past rounds where the sides met with mediators.
