Russia’s United Nations envoy Vitaly Churkin said the Syrian military had stopped its operations in Aleppo under the agreement, adding: “The fighting around eastern Aleppo is over”.
Advertisement
Russia, a crucial Assad ally, launched an air war in support of his forces previous year, while the United States and other Western nations backed the opposition.
None of the residents reached by AP witnessed the alleged killings, and their accounts reflected the deepening chaos.
The U.N.’s children’s agency is warning that dozens of unaccompanied children are trapped in a building under fire in eastern Aleppo and is calling for their immediate evacuation from the rebel enclave.
Rupert Colville, spokesman of the United Nations human rights office, voiced deep fear of retribution against thousands of civilians still believed to be holed up in a “hellish corner” of less than a square kilometre of opposition-held areas.
They were looking after the orphaned children of another daughter killed in the bombing, she said, and were reduced to putting pots and pans in the street to collect rainwater.
“Civilians have paid a brutal price during this conflict, and we’re filled with the deepest foreboding for those who remain in this last hellish corner of opposition-held eastern Aleppo”, he said. “We are extremely concerned that the number of journalists killed or arrested will spike dramatically as the government reasserts control over all of Aleppo”, CPJ Middle East and North Africa Program Coordinator Sherif Mansour said from Washington.
Tens of thousands of them fled to parts of the city held by the government or by a Kurdish militia, and tens of thousands more retreated further into the rebel enclave as it rapidly shrank under the army’s lightning advance.
The fall of Aleppo would deal the opposition their worst defeat since the beginning of Syria’s conflict in 2011, and leave pro-Assad forces in control of the country’s five major cities.
He reiterated Moscow’s denial that abuses were taking place.
France and Britain requested the emergency Security Council meeting following reports that Syrian forces had entered homes and killed civilians including women in children in the final hours of the battle for Aleppo.
A US State Department officials says the ceasefire was reportedly brokered between Russian Federation and Turkey without US involvement.
After four years of holding onto almost half of what was once Syria’s largest city and commercial center, thousands of residents of rebel-held Aleppo had been cornered in a one-square-mile sliver of land for days as Syrian government troops, backed by Russian Federation, resisted calls for a cease-fire, pushing into the territory as rebel defenses crumbled.
“Aleppo should represent the end of a quest for military victory”, not the start of a new brutal campaign, he said.
Turkey said that under the agreement civilians would first evacuate, followed by a withdrawal of rebel groups. “The Syrian government has established control over east Aleppo”.
The UN estimates that almost 400,000 people have been killed since the Syrian conflict began in March 2011, and more than half the population has been displaced.
The International Committee of the Red Cross on Tuesday urged those fighting in Aleppo to do all they can to protect and spare civilian lives. Forces loyal to Bashar al-Assad killed 82 people on Monday, UN says. Abu Malek al-Shamali, a resident in the rebel area, said dead bodies lay in the streets.
Turkey’s Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus called for an immediate cease-fire and, if that is too late, for an worldwide aid convoy.
“Today, tomorrow, every day, we will intensify our talks with Russian Federation and other countries so we can find a solution to this humanitarian tragedy”, Mevlut Cavusoglu, the Turkish foreign minister, said.
Advertisement
Keaten reported from Geneva.
