But even as Kerry vowed to press on with all efforts to find a peaceful solution to the war between Syrian President Bashar Assad’s Russian-backed government and US -backed rebels, the American acknowledged the current strategy wasn’t working. Before the war, the city held almost 3 million people and was Syria’s economic hub.
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“What’s happening now is annihilation in every sense of the word”, he said.
Western diplomats fear a bloodbath if the government unleashes a full-blown assault to capture the besieged opposition-held zone, where 250,000 civilians still are trapped.
US-Russian talks at the United Nations have failed to revive a collapsed truce.
The Thursday talks broke up after Russian Federation refused U.S. demands that it promise to immediately ground the Syrian regime’s air force.
Infractions by both Syrian President Bashar Assad and US -supported rebels became increasingly regular. The two powers accuse each other of failing to rein in their respective allies on the ground.
An AFP correspondent in eastern Aleppo saw massive destruction in several neighbourhoods, including Al-Kalasseh and Bustan al-Qasr, where some streets were nearly erased by the bombardment.
Rescue workers shared numerous videos of men digging children out of piles of debris and whole neighborhoods reduced to rubble.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Saturday that troops and pro-government Palestinian fighters have captured the Handarat camp north of the city.
The Al Jazeera news agency tweeted that its bureau in the city had been partly destroyed.
A bombing campaign in rebel-held districts of Syria’s Aleppo city intensified Friday, targeting several neighbourhoods and centres of the award-winning volunteer civil defence group known as the White Helmets, as the government announced a new offensive in the area.
A high ranking military source confirmed that the bombardment was in preparation for a ground assault. The army said the operation would include a ground attack, and could last “for some time”.
It has been a focal point of clashes between the Syrian army and the rebels. The Observatory said the army had made some progress in a southern district of the city. Syria declared the week-long ceasefire over on Monday.
As has been the pattern in more than five years of brutal warfare in Syria, civilians in Aleppo’s rebel-held areas bore the brunt of the violence, huddling in homes that provided little shelter against what activists described as unrelenting strikes by warplanes and helicopters.
On Thursday in NY, the United States and Russian Federation failed to agree on how to revive the ceasefire during what UN Syria mediator Staffan de Mistura called a “long, painful, hard and disappointing” meeting.
“We can not continue on the same path any longer”, Mr Kerry said, saying “credibility” had to be restored to the process.
Secretary of State John Kerry and his Russian counterpart, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, met briefly, but there was no indication that a short-lived cessation of hostilities that ended early this week would be revived anytime soon.
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”.
Kerry’s statement, after three days of private and public diplomacy on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly, provided an ominous end note to a week diplomats had hoped would be a major capstone toward peace.
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Mr Lavrov laid the blame on the USA for failing to control the rebel groups it backs.
