It also has raised fears of an all-out government assault on Aleppo and warnings of a humanitarian disaster in the 5-year-old civil war.
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“Aleppo is burning” reads a stark headline in the Saudi paper al-Riyadh, while an editorial in the Lebanese daily al-Mustaqbal accuses President Bashar al-Assad of “burning Syria while the whole world watches”.
That could signal plans for a ground assault.
The latest reports from Aleppo have alarmed regional media outlets opposed to the Syrian regime, with fire being the image of choice.
Once Syria’s economic powerhouse, Aleppo has been ravaged by fighting since 2012 when rebels seized the city’s east, confining government forces to the west.
The HNC walked out of UN-backed peace talks in Geneva earlier this month in frustration at the increasing bloodshed.
The U.N. human rights chief, Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, said violence was “soaring back to the levels we saw prior to the cessation of hostilities”.
The aim appears to be the global powers’ will to consolidate and salvage the already-shaky truce, or cessation of hostilities, which has went into force in late February, but has largely been threatened in recent weeks with an upsurge in the military showdowns between the army and the rebels, both hold each other responsible for the incessant violence.
Lavrov again stressed the need for the full participation of Syrian Kurds in the talks, as well as for the disengagement of the moderate opposition from groups considered to be terrorist organizations.
“We want to focus on strengthening the cessation of hostilities, renewing it, reaffirming it, so that we can quell the fighting or the violations”, State Department spokesman Mark Toner told reporters.
Friday’s airstrikes followed a brief lull in the morning, a day after scores people were killed in air raids and shelling in the contested city.
State TV said the attack on the Malla Khan mosque in the Bab al-Faraj neighborhood and its surroundings came when the worshipers were leaving after Friday Prayers.
The resumption of air raids prompted religious leaders to suspend the collective Friday prayers in mosques in rebel-held areas. “The heart of the believers is aching. but preserving lives is an important religious duty”.
In a government-held neighbourhood in western Syria, Nour Shmeilan, an Orthodox Christian, said she was too afraid to attend Good Friday church services.
On Friday, Doctors Without Borders, which had supported the hospital alongside other worldwide organizations, said the death toll in Thursday’s bombing had risen to 50, including six medical staff and patients. One of the city’s last remaining pediatricians was killed in the bombing.
It was the second time this week that an air strike hit one of the few medical facilities still operating in rebel areas. The Syrian Civil Defense said there were no casualties in the shelling because the clinic was empty on Friday.
A third medical center in the Bustan al-Qasr neighborhood was bombed shortly before dark Friday, destroying the facility.
MSF warned that the 250,000 residents in the rebel-held parts of Aleppo are in danger of being completely cut off and left without medical care.
“There can be no justification for these appalling acts of violence deliberately targeting hospitals and clinics”, said Marianne Gasser, head of the ICRC in Syria. No corner is being spared. “Attacks on hospitals and medical staff are a devastating indicator of how the war in Syria is waged, one of numerous brutal ways in which civilians are targeted”, she said.
Zancada said the city “is already a shell of what it once was”, and the latest assault appears determined to eliminate even that.
What impact the unilateral declaration would have was not immediately clear. The opposition seemed unlikely to abide by it after dozens were killed in government airstrikes in Aleppo.
The Syrian army announced on Friday that a “regime of silence” state will be observed in hotspots near the capital Damascus and the northwestern province of Latakia after midnight.
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The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitoring group, said air strikes and government shelling had killed at least 131 civilians including 21 children in rebel areas in the past week, while rebel shelling of government areas had killed 71 civilians including 13 children.
