Meanwhile, the United Nations special envoy to Syria said not a single aid convoy had reached besieged areas in the past month. He told The Independent, “We were passing them from one balcony to the other”.
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Aleppo, Syria’s most populous pre-war city and its commercial hub, has become the focus of fighting in the five-year-old civil war.
Elsewhere in his comments, de Mistura said the issue of a humanitarian pause in Aleppo would be the main topic of a meeting later on Thursday of the countries that make up the International Support Group for Syria (ISSG), which sit on the humanitarian task force.
Airstrikes on Idlib city, 60 km (35 miles) southwest of Aleppo, killed 25 people, including 15 civilians, on Wednesday, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
SYRIAN opposition activists have released haunting footage showing a young boy rescued from the rubble in the aftermath of a devastating air strike on Aleppo.
A Syrian man walks past destroyed buildings on May 2, 2016, in Aleppo’s Bab al-Hadid neighbourhood.
“Coming from the worldwide principles of humanitarian law and with intention to extend the scales of humanitarian mission in Aleppo, Russian Defense ministry is ready to support de Mistura’s proposal about weekly 48 hour humanitarian ceasefires to deliver the city’s citizens food, medicine and to restore vital service systems that got broken in rebels’ shellfire”, Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov told Russian media. He welcomed the Russian Defense Ministry tweet and said the United Nations humanitarian team “is now set to mobilize itself to respond to this challenge”.
Responding to questions, de Mistura said Russian Federation and the U.S. have a genuine intention of finding a non-military solution, but a 48-hour pause in Aleppo would require some heavy lifting from not only the two co-chairs, but from those who have influence on fighting on the ground.
He said Russian Federation was ready to support deliveries starting next week. “Sometimes, you have to cry”. Abu al-Ezz said they do that “because we are afraid security forces will infiltrate their medical network and target ambulances as they transfer patients from one hospital to another”.
Activists living in opposition areas rely on informants in government-controlled Latakia province to warn residents of impending airstrikes.
“We expected the plane to arrive in Aleppo airspace in two minutes, and sure enough it did”, Raslan said.
The Beirut bureau chief for the New York Times, Anne Barnard, wrote on Facebook, “We can get numb seeing dead and injured children remotely day after day, but some pix particularly get to the mom in me and this is one”.
It remains to be seen what effect the image of Omran will have on the public, but one can hope that it ensures they’ll remember the real toll of this conflict.
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Amnesty International reported the use of chemical weapons by Syrian government forces on at least three occasions during a two-week period in August.
