The Security Council was set to meet today to discuss the upsurge in violence since the Syrian army announced an offensive to retake the rebel-held east of the devastated city.
Advertisement
Kerry said they had made “a little bit of progress” on resolving their differences over the Syrian crisis.
Syrian forces backed by Palestinian groups succeeded Saturday to recapture a camp of Palestinian refugees in the northern province of Aleppo from the hands of rebels, according to state news agency SANA. An army statement confirming the advance said “large numbers of terrorists” had been killed, using the regime’s terminology for any anti-Assad groups.
Hanaa Singer, UNICEF representative in Syria, says intense attacks after midnight Thursday have damaged the Bab al-Nairab station that supplies some 250,000 people in rebel-held eastern parts of the contested city with water.
Warplanes targeted rebel-held areas of eastern Aleppo on Friday, in a second day of heavy bombardment hours after the army announced the start of a military operation there, rescue workers and activists said.
Unicef, the United Nations children’s agency, has warned that fierce air strikes on Friday stopped repairs to a damaged water pumping station supplying rebel-held eastern districts of the city.
Ammar al Selmo, the head of civil defense rescue service in Aleppo – known as the White Helmets – said three of their four centers had been hit and more than 30 people died in the strikes, and that doesn’t include the many who are “still under the rubble”, NBC News reported. Selmo of the Civil Defence said the toll was more than 100.
Russian planes also continued their pounding of residential parts of Aleppo, with whole buildings flattened, according to rebels and residents.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a British based organisation that reports on the war, said it had documented 72 deaths since Friday, including five children.
Sep 24, 2016- USA and Russian plans to end Syria’s conflict must be saved as there is no alternative, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has told the UN.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry reported “little progress” in getting a truce after talks in NY with Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov.
A Syrian military official said that airstrikes and shelling in Aleppo would continue for an extended period and the operation would expand into a ground invasion of rebel-held districts.
A seven-day cease-fire negotiated by the US and Russian Federation fell through on Monday leading to the fresh wave of violence that killed 91 people on Friday and 25 on Saturday as Syrian troops reportedly captured a rebel stronghold north of Aleppo.
Advertisement
In an address Friday to the General Assembly, Lavrov made it clear that Russian Federation will not accede to Kerry’s demand, insisting instead on the responsibility of the US and it allies to separate “so-called moderate opposition from terrorists”.
