Efforts to bridge the divide between the United States and Russian Federation and bring Syrian government and opposition forces back to negotiations come after pro-government forces have effectively put rebel-held districts of Aleppo under siege.
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The Syrian army says that pro-government forces have cut off all supply routes into the eastern, rebel-held part of Aleppo in the country’s north.
Syrian volunteers, known as the White Helmets, carry a young boy after they dug him out from under the rubble of buildings destroyed following reported air strikes on the rebel-held neighborhood of Al-Mashhad in the northern city of Aleppo.
Medical posts and food handouts would be provided along the three corridors intended for civilians and fighters who have put down their weapons, Shoigu said.
Concern is growing for at least 250,000 people who have been trapped in rebel-controlled eastern Aleppo since early July, and the U.N aid chief asked on Monday for weekly 48-hour pauses in fighting to allow food and aid to be delivered.
The Syrian government often refers to the various Syrian rebel groups as terrorists or mercenaries.
Many Western leaders are backing rebel groups in the brutal conflict because they want to weaken Syria, Assad claimed.
Bahaa Halabi, an opposition media activist inside Aleppo, said there are no corridors out of east Aleppo and even if there were, he would not take them. “Slaughtering us, starving us, and besieging civilians”, he said, speaking from the city via Skype. “It’s impossible for people here to go to regime areas”. The station confirmed that President Bashar Assad’s forces capture of areas in Layramoun and near Castello road, the main link between rebel-held parts of Aleppo and the rest of the country.
Assad has issued amnesty offers several times in the past in the course of Syria’s civil war, now in its sixth year.
More than 280,000 people have been killed in Syria since the conflict began in March 2011 with anti-government protests that were met with a brutal regime crackdown.
De Mistura told reporters on Thursday that he understood Russian military experts “and perhaps (some) from the U.S.” were headed to Geneva, “most likely in order to discuss the devils in the details” of the two powers’ efforts to end the fighting in Syria.
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Meanwhile, in Geneva, the United Nations was expected to hold talks involving high-level Russian and US diplomats aimed at reviving the stalled Syria peace talks.
