Syria has been mired in civil war since 2011, with government forces loyal to President Bashar Assad fighting numerous opposition factions and extremist groups.
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US Secretary of State John Kerry on Monday called on Russian Federation and its Damascus ally to restrain “from conducting offensive operations” in Aleppo, where regime forces surrounded rebel-held districts.
Both Syrian government forces and opposition groups have denied using chemical weapons during the five-year-long civil war.
“Air power can do so little in urban fighting, especially if the other side lacks smart weapons, and the Russian airpower is clearly short on effective precision weapons”, Kahwaji said.
The fierce fighting around Aleppo coincided with the passing of an August 1 deadline for a United Nations -supported process to start a political transition in Syria.
Eleven people were killed and dozens others injured Wednesday when Russian warplanes struck opposition-held areas of Syria’s northwestern Aleppo province, a local civil defense official said. One of them was a child who lost his leg, and he is now in a serious condition. He was just 7 or 8 years old.
Smoke billows from buildings during an operation by Syrian government forces to retake control of the rebel-held district of Leramun, on the northwest outskirts of Aleppo, on July 26, 2016.
The groups waging the offensive – including Al-Qaeda’s former Syria affiliate and the powerful Islamist Ahrar al-Sham – have promised to end the government encirclement of eastern parts of Aleppo. For their part, the rebels responded with a major offensive to break the Aleppo siege. “As far as we know from the information we’ve had from the defence ministry, those in the helicopter died, they died heroically, because they were trying to move the aircraft away to minimise victims on the ground”, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
They say that both civilians and surrendering rebels have used these routes. It’s spokesman John Kirby said that “he is not in a position to confirm the veracity of (the reports)”, and continued by saying “Certainly, if it’s true, it would be extremely serious”.
“The target date was set with the agreement that the parties were going to be able to go to the talks and begin immediately to negotiate”, he said.
Blanco told CNN that none of Doctors Without Borders’ sources in the city had seen the corridors being used.
“I know there have been significant efforts to carry out the humanitarian operation in Aleppo”.
Lebanon’s Hezbollah said the partition of Iraq and Syria was a possible outcome of sectarian fighting across the region and there was no prospect of any end to the war in Syria until after November’s USA presidential election. The US has sought to scuttle Russian proposals to evacuate the city through humanitarian corridors.
However, the Syrian state news agency SANA later accused rebels of firing rockets armed with toxic gas into government-controlled areas of nearby Aleppo, killing at least five people.
According to the anti-regime, voluntary search-and-rescue group Idlib Civil Defence, cylinders containing chlorine gas were dumped in residential areas in Saraqeb, Idlib province.
Dr Abdel Aziz Bareeh, who works in Saraqeb said.”We know it’s chlorine because we were hit by it in the past and we are familiar with its odour and symptoms”.
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“Every day we have at least 20 to 30 attacks by Russian aircraft or by the helicopters”.
