The UN Security Council will hold an urgent meeting Sunday regarding increased bloodshed in Syria, Anadolu agency reported.
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Hospitals are overwhelmed with casualties and medical workers are expecting numerous wounded to die from a lack of treatment, according to Mohammad Zein Khandaqani, a member of the Medical Council, which oversees medical affairs in the opposition areas.
Rami Abdurrahman, of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said Friday that government troops seized buildings on the frontline, pushing back rebel fighters in the southern al-Amiriah district.
On September 9, Russian Federation and the United States agreed on a milestone deal on the Syrian crisis after some 13 hours of marathon talks in the Swiss city of Geneva.
As NPR’s Alice Fordham has reported, the USA says it is still trying to negotiate with Russian Federation to restore the truce.
The UK’s foreign minister, Boris Johnson, says Russian Federation should be investigated for war crimes in Syria. The U.N. says the attack could amount to a war crime if proven deliberate, though it has not assigned responsibility yet.
Dozens more civilians were killed in other parts of Aleppo province, including at least 15 in the village of Bushqateen, three in Kfar Hamra and 11 in Al-Bab, a stronghold of the Islamic State group, according to forensic team member Abu Jaafar and the Observatory.
The UN Security Council is due to meet later Sunday in an emergency session to discuss the escalating violence, which UN chief Ban Ki-moon described as “chilling”.
After a contentious two-and-a-half hour meeting with colleagues in New York, Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said they would meet again Friday in a bid to find a way forward. “(Assad’s air forces) have directly targeted civil defense centers”, Alhaj said.
“They (the US) themselves say: ‘This is a mistake.’ They offered an apology to the Syrians, so to say, through us”, Foreign Minister said in an interview on Russian television. The assumption is that these are rebels backed by the USA, who have been armed and supplied by Arab countries and the West to take down the government of Bashar al-Assad.
Intense air strikes toppled buildings and killed at least forty-five civilians in Aleppo after Syrian army announced an offensive to retake the rebel-held city.
A monitoring group says Syrian rebels have retaken an area in Aleppo that fell to government forces the day before, extending a punishing stalemate in the contested northern city.
Seven people were killed in a strike as they queued to buy yoghurt at a market in the Bustan al-Qasr district on the front line dividing the government-held west from the rebel-held east of the city.
Residents in the opposition-held east of Aleppo, where more than 250,000 civilians are besieged by government forces, reported ongoing barrel bomb attacks Sunday.
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The Nour el-Din el-Zinki insurgent group, which is powerful in Aleppo, said the offensive showed the government and its allies want to impose “a military solution” to Syria’s crisis.
