It said: “At least 27 civilians, including three children, were killed and dozens more wounded by raids by Russian aircraft and regime helicopters on several rebel districts of Aleppo”.
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But as diplomats from the U.S., Saudi Arabia, Russia and Iran met Thursday on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in NY in a bid to restore the truce, the Syrian army announced the start of its new offensive against Aleppo’s opposition-controlled districts.
“Unfortunately it continues. There are planes in the sky now”, Ammar al Selmo, the head of Civil Defence in the opposition-held east, told Reuters.
Residents in rebel-held areas of Syria’s Aleppo cowered in their homes on Saturday as relentless missile strikes and barrel bomb attacks pounded the besieged eastern half of the divided city.
In Damascus, the Syrian army urged residents of Aleppo to stay away “from the positions of terrorists” as it launched its new offensive in defiance of the truce.
Activists described heavy explosions that rocked opposition-held neighborhoods overnight and into the morning hours, with targets including centers of a volunteer civil defense group known as the White Helmets.
The capitulation of the rebels in Waer means that the city of Homs is now entirely under government control for the first time in almost five years.
“I am no less determined today than I was yesterday but I am even more frustrated”, Kerry told reporters after the session.
The regime announced the offensive on state media Thursday. An estimated 250,000 people are in dire need of humanitarian aid. A military source said the bombardment was in preparation for a ground operation to retake parts of the city.
An unnamed Syrian military official quoted by state TV confirmed the capture of Handarat, adding that many insurgents were killed.
The U.S. supports some rebel groups fighting the government of President Bashar al-Assad, while Russian Federation is a close ally of the regime.
The collapse of the ceasefire – the same fate as that of all previous efforts to halt a war that has killed hundreds of thousands of Syrians – appeared to have doomed the peace bid, probably the last chance for a settlement before US President Barack Obama leaves office in January.
“It was a long, painful, hard and disappointing meeting”, the U.N. Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura told reporters after the meeting of the International Syria Support Group, which includes about two dozen major and regional powers.
Prospects of getting the truce back on course seemed dim. John Kerry, US secretary of state, met with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov late into Thursday night but no agreement was reached. The pumping station supplying rebel-held parts of Aleppo was damaged on Thursday and subsequent strikes had made repairs impossible, Mr Dwyer said.
The Nour el-Din el-Zinki insurgent group, which is powerful in Aleppo, said the government’s offensive shows that the government and its allies want to impose “a military solution” to Syria’s crisis.
“The air forces of Russia and Syria did not conduct any strikes against the United Nations aid convoy in the southwestern outskirts of Aleppo”, Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said in a statement carried by Russian news agencies.
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“What’s happening now is annihilation in every sense of the word”, he told Reuters.
