Rebel fighters and their militant allies launched an assault on Sunday in a bid to ease a more than two-week government siege of opposition-held districts of the city.
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The latest civilian deaths come as rebels press an assault meant to break a government siege of opposition-held Aleppo that began on July 17 and has raised fears of a humanitarian crisis.
Opposition monitoring groups reported intense airstrikes and shelling on Aleppo and its outskirts.
The UN’s deputy envoy for Syria, Ramzy Ezzeldin Ramzy, did not elaborate on what kind of breakthrough it was anticipating at a time when rebel and government forces seem dedicated to the battle in Aleppo.
Amnesty International said in a report released in July that Islamist rebels and jihadis active in Syria were guilty of war crimes, accusing them of being responsible for “a frightening wave of kidnappings, torture and summary executions”.
Syrian government forces bolstered by Russian air strikes are making progress in the battleground city of Aleppo, rolling back the short-lived gains of a rebel offensive.
The Syrian conflict began as a mostly unarmed uprising against President Bashar al-Assad in March 2011, but it quickly escalated into a full-blown civil war with more than 280,000 people now estimated to have been killed in fighting between between the government, the opposition and other armed groups. The Syrian government has blamed “terrorist groups” for the second attack.
President Barack Obama said Thursday he does not trust Russian Federation to cooperate militarily with the United States on ending or slowing the civil war in Syria but that the proposition must be tested to try to bring an end to the conflict.
United Nations humanitarian adviser Jan Egeland said Russia’s proposal was limited and said the United Nations was ready with a much more comprehensive operation to take aid to the 250,000 civilians blockaded inside eastern Aleppo and to evacuate those who wanted to leave, including the wounded.
“That’s why we’re also working to counter violent extremism more broadly, including the social, economic and political factors that help fuel groups like ISIL and Al-Qaeda in the first place”, he said. However, so far fewer than 200 residents of the rebel-held side have left through the supposed safe passages.
Syrian state-run radio confirmed that government troops had started a “wide-scale counterattack” against rebels in south-west Aleppo.
Hospitals supported by Doctors Without Borders in rebel-held Aleppo have seen a significant increase in wounded since the fighting intensified, said Pablo Marco Blanco, Middle East operations manager for the humanitarian group.
They say that both civilians, and rebel fighters who have laid down arms, have used these routes – although the figures they give are a fraction of those believed to be in besieged Aleppo. It said the shells were launched by rebels.
On Wednesday, Lieutenant-General Sergey Chvarkov, the director of the Russian Reconciliation Center in Syria, said the information was given to the United States on Monday, a day prior to the attack, Press TV reported.
“That’s what we’re going to test”, Obama said, “We go into this without any blinders on”.
The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, OPCW, said in a statement that recent media reports that highlighted the possible use of chemical weapons in Syria are of great concern.
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The corridors, he said, “need to be guaranteed by all parties in the area”.
