Staffan de Mistura, the United Nations envoy for Syria, said Thursday that if the chorine gas attack took place it would constitute a “war crime“.
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Russia, an ally of Assad also involved in the conflict, recently said it will allow daily cease-fires to accommodate aid delivery.
Advances by warring sides, which have led to a siege of rebel-held neighbourhoods and the severing of a major route into government areas of control, have choked off supplies. He said the first blast released a gas he identified by the smell as chlorine, but the wind was blowing in the other direction, lessening the odor.
A senior officer with the Russian Armed Forces General Staff announced on Wednesday that military operations in Aleppo will stop for three hours a day starting on Thursday.
Russian Federation was meanwhile offered the possibility of joint operations against IS by Turkey, which has backed rebels against President Bashar al-Assad.
We are 15 of the last doctors serving the remaining 300,000 citizens of eastern Aleppo.
The offer came one day after crucial talks between President Vladimir Putin and Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Other air strikes hit a market area in the south-western Aleppo province town of Urem al-Kubra, killing at least six people, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the war in Syria.
“We do not need tears or sympathy or even prayers, we need your action”.
“Unless a permanent lifeline to Aleppo is opened it will be only a matter of time until we are again surrounded by regime troops, hunger takes hold and hospitals’ supplies run completely dry”, the letter said. The doctors are quite afraid that the attack on medical facilities will wipe out medical services in Aleppo in a month if they continue at the same rate.
The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) said Thursday that reports of possible chemical weapons use in Syria “are of great concern”.
President Putin’s recent meeting with President Erdogan of Turkey has made the worldwide community optimistic about a potential (but temporary) cessation of hostilities in the war-ravaged nation, especially since both Russian Federation and Turkey support opposing sides in the conflict between Assad’s government and the rebels.
Also briefing the press, Mr.de Mistura’s Special Advisor, Jan Egeland said: “The stakes can not be higher in the coming days, because, really, millions of Syrian civilians are now in a seeming free fall, from Aleppo to Eastern Ghouta, from Fua and Kefraya to Zabadani and Madaya, and to the whole people of Darayya, who are still waiting the second half of the first convoy that they promised them”.
Russian Federation said the raids destroyed a “chemical weapons factory” as well as a weapons storage facility and IS training camp.
The ministry’s statement said the jihadists suffered “significant material damages” in the strikes and that “a large number of fighters have been killed”.
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A man receiving treatment in hospital said he had been in the Zebdieh area of the city, where he lives, when two missiles landed near him and a group of friends.
