Analysts said Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s decision to launch an all-out assault on the last big urban area still in rebel hands marked a turning point in a conflict that was stalemated for years.
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In a statement, the Foreign Ministry said it strongly condemned the attacks over the past few days targeting Aleppo, which killed over 300 civilians, injuring hundreds more. “Even between our neighborhoods, the roads are full of rubble and destruction”.
The group says it has just two fire engines left for all of east Aleppo which, like its ambulances, are struggling to move around the city.
Aleppo has endured a day of devastating air strikes with at least 45 civilians killed, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring body said.
Damage to the water pumping system is particularly unsafe for the estimated 250,000 people still living in the eastern part of the city, because the shallow wells there only provide highly contaminated water.
“We have exchanged ideas with the Russians and we plan to consult tomorrow with respect to those ideas”, US Secretary of State John Kerry said.
The head of the Civil Defence Rescue Service, Ammar al Selmo said on Saturday, “There are planes in the sky now”.
The United States and Russian Federation are on opposite sides of the 5-1/2-year-old Syrian civil war in which more than 400,000 people have died and 11 million displaced. “It is like doomsday today in Aleppo”.
Yasser Ibrahim al-Youssef, a political representative for Nour al-Dine al-Zinki, one of the rebel groups fighting in Aleppo, said Friday the war had returned in force.
Pan-Arab al-Mayadeen TV said that the Syrian army has repelled the rebels’ counter offensive on Handarat.
That appeared unlikely, as many analysts have said the Syrian miliary does not have the manpower to seize and hold significant territory.
Syrians in eastern Aleppo and other besieged cities and towns are facing a dire shortage of food, medicine and other supplies.
The intensified assault on Aleppo came after efforts to revive a partial cease-fire in the conflict stalled in NY, where diplomats from the International Syria Support Group had been meeting on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly annual session.
Diplomatic efforts to halt the violence stalled on Friday after John Kerry, the US Secretary of State, and Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, failed to achieve agreement at talks in NY.
WATCH: How critical is the city of Aleppo in Syria’s war? .
On Monday, the Syrian army declared the end of ceasefire regime blaming militants for numerous violations that made the cessation of hostilities unreasonable.
“What’s happening now is annihilation in every sense of the word”, Selmo said.
Syria has been gripped by civil war since March 2011 with various terrorist groups, including Daesh (also known as ISIS or ISIL), now controlling parts of it.
“Will we be inured to this?” he asked.
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Aleppo has a strategic importance for the warring parties due to its location near the Turkish borders, and being Syria’s largest province, and once the economic hub of Syria.
