Syrian and Russian aircraft pounded rebel-held areas of Aleppo on Friday, a monitor said, after the army announced a new offensive aimed at retaking all of the divided second city.
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NEWS BRIEF Dozens of people have been killed and several others wounded in airstrikes carried out by the Syrian military in rebel-held parts of Aleppo, less than a day after global diplomatic efforts in NY to restart a cease-fire failed.
Fifteen people were killed Friday when Assad regime and Russian warplanes targeted opposition-held parts of Syria’s northwestern city of Aleppo, local medical sources have said.
Residents and activists described the use of a missile that produced earthquake-like tremors upon impact and razed buildings right down to basement level, where many residents desperately seek protection during bombing.
A senior official in an Aleppo-based rebel faction, the Levant Front, told media outlet that the weapons appeared created to bring down entire buildings.
He said the center believed more than 50 people, including children, were trapped in rubble in different areas of Aleppo.
Ten people were killed in at least 30 airstrikes, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the United Kingdom -based opposition monitoring group.
The United States and Russian Federation are on opposite sides of the 5-1/2-year-old Syrian civil war in which more than 400,000 people have died and 11 million displaced.
“The raids are intense and continuous”, Observatory Director Rami Abdulrahman said.
A Western diplomat said on Friday the only way for the government to take the area quickly would be to totally destroy it in “such a monstrous atrocity that it would resonate for generations”. Rebels say the strikes are mostly being carried out by Russian warplanes.
Hanaa Singer, UNICEF representative in Syria, said intense attacks damaged the Bab al-Nairab station that supplies some 250,000 people in rebel-held eastern parts of the contested city with water.
“Depriving children of water puts them at risk of catastrophic outbreaks of waterborne diseases and adds to the suffering, fear and horror that children in Aleppo live through every day”, she said in a statement.
United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon warned that the Syrian offensive’s airstrikes, incendiary weapons and bunker-buster bombs in densely populated places may amount to war crimes, the Ban’s spokesman said Saturday.
But Lavrov said that it would be “senseless” to impose a new truce because the United States had failed to separate moderate rebel groups from jihadists.
An army source told Reuters on September 23 that the offensive would be “comprehensive”, with a ground assault following air and artillery bombardment.
The army said it expected the operation to include a ground attack, which was expected to last “for some time”.
The northern city of Aleppo has become a key battleground in Syria’s bloody five-year civil war.
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The announcement of the new Syrian army offensive on Thursday came as global powers failed to revive a collapsed ceasefire during diplomatic talks in NY.
