The capture of the Handarat camp a few kilometres north of Aleppo marked the first major ground advance by the government in an offensive that rebels say has unleashed unprecedented firepower against their half of the city.
Advertisement
It comes as missiles rained down on rebel-held areas of Syria’s Aleppo on Friday, causing widespread destruction that overwhelmed rescue teams, as the army prepared a ground offensive to retake the city. By Friday morning, one centre in the rebel-held Ansari neighbourhood in the southern part of city had been put out of service.
Before the partial cease-fire declared last week, rebels would often shell civilian neighborhoods in western Aleppo, and the government of Bashar Assad regularly bombed rebel-held eastern Aleppo, cutting civilians off from much-needed aid.
A Syrian military official said on Friday that air strikes and shelling in Aleppo would continue for an extended period and the operation would expand into a ground invasion of rebel-held districts. But a senior US official said Wednesday that Washington has determined with a very high degree of confidence that the attack was carried out by a Russian piloted aircraft.
The Syrian military said the truce expired Monday night, shortly before presumed Russian or Syrian government jets launched a sustained aerial attack on Aleppo’s opposition-held neighborhoods. “Surrender now or you will meet your inevitable destiny”, read one leaflet, which had a photo of the body of a bearded militant with a rocket-propelled grenade next to him. “Our obligation to civilians on all sides is to go where and when we can with relief”, said Jan Egeland, a senior United Nations humanitarian official focused on Syria.
“We go to save as many people as we can”, says White Helmet Khaled Farah.
Jean-Marc Aryault, the foreign minister of France, one of the members of the International Syria Support Group, said earlier Friday that he feared the diplomatic paralysis reflected a growing weariness with the daily horrors of the Syrian war. “Aleppo will remain free of Assad, his sectarian militias and thugs”.
Elsewhere in Syria, airstrikes on the opposition-run town of Talbiseh, outside of the central city of Homs, killed two civilians and wounded tens of others, according to the activist-run Talbiseh Media Center. The station said pumping from the station has ceased, but said work had begun to fix it. A pro-government TV station, Addounia TV, blamed the armed groups for targeting the water station in Bab al-Nairab, which feeds both sides of the contested city. It was not immediately possible to verify or assess the extent of the damage or independently confirm who hit it.
The rebels and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring body described raids by warplanes they said must belong to Russian Federation.
Advertisement
Ibrahim Alhaj, a member of the White Helmets in Aleppo, called the award a “pride for the Syrian revolution”. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and his counterpart Sergey Lavrov exchanged blame in a public session on Syria at the U.N. Security Council.
