He called for the immediate grounding of planes and helicopters that have launched air strikes, including a Russian one earlier this week that the USA says hit an aid convoy, killing 20 civilians.
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Aleppo was once Syria’s commercial and industrial hub but has been ravaged by fighting and roughly divided between government control in the west and rebel control in the east since mid-2012.
But U.S. officials said there was no point returning to a situation in which rebels would be pressed to hold fire, while the Syrian and Russian military could violate the agreement. The Local Coordination Committees, another monitoring group, said 49 were killed on Saturday alone.
Al-Assad on Thursday said the United States is not interested in a ceasefire, but that his government is ready and willing to commit to one.
“If people are serious about wanting a peaceful outcome to this war, then they should cease and desist bombing innocent women and children, cease cutting off water and laying siege in medieval terms to an entire community”, he said.
“Military operations include everything, and of course the most important part is the ground operation”, the source said.
The latest air strikes on Aleppo come after 20 people were killed and the city’s main water pumping station was destroyed, according to the media center.
An intense bombing campaign has targeted several areas in the rebel-held part of Aleppo city, just hours after the USA and Russian Federation ended any pretence of their ceasefire for Syria remaining in force.
Damascus and its allies including Shi’ite militia from Iran, Iraq and Lebanon have encircled rebel-held areas of Aleppo gradually this year, achieving their long-held objective of fully besieging the area this summer with Russian air support. The Observatory said insurgents shelled the government stronghold of Masyaf, home to a large number of Alawites, members of President Bashar Assad’s sect, which until now had largely been spared from violence.
“Breaking the siege through the Castello Road has become very hard”, Yassin Abu Raed, an opposition activist based in Aleppo province, told The Associated Press. -Russian cooperation on airstrikes against Islamic State and al-Qaida’s Syrian affiliate, formerly known as the Nusra Front.
The offensive coincides with global meetings on Syria in NY, ostensibly meant to revive the truce announced jointly by the United States and Russian Federation on Sept 9.
Rami Abdurrahman, of Observatory for Human Rights, said Friday that government troops seized buildings on the frontline, pushing back rebel fighters in the southern al-Amiriah district.
United Nations children’s charity, UNICEF, said this week’s renewed airstrikes – which further dashed hopes of reviving last week’s cease-fire – had damaged a water pumping station which supplies about 250,000 people in rebel-held eastern parts and violence is preventing fix teams from reaching it.
The UN children’s agency said the damage Thursday to the water pumping station, plus the retaliatory closure of another serving the western part of Aleppo, left nearly 2 million people in the city without access to running water.
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“Depriving children of water puts them at risk of catastrophic outbreaks of water-borne diseases”, Ms Singer said.
