“It is really critical”.
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The two sides had said that if it held for seven days, it would be followed by the establishment of a Joint Implementation Centre for both countries to co-ordinate the targeting of IS and al Qaida-linked militants. “It is very, very intense”, he said.
One White Helmet volunteer reported air strikes as he gave an interview to the BBC World Service.
With the increase in strikes on top of the desperate shortage of fuel, it has become both more hard and more unsafe for the civil defence teams to move. The renewed conflict, including a deadly strike on a United Nations aid convoy outside Aleppo on Monday night, also has blocked the delivery of most humanitarian supplies to opposition-held areas, though one convoy reached a besieged district outside Damascus on Thursday.
The Syrian army and its allies have not launched a ground offensive on the city since 2012. Another high-ranking military source subsequently confirmed, “We have begun reconnaissance, aerial and artillery bombardment. The timing of the ground operation will depend on the results of the strikes”.
The Aleppo Media Center posted photos on Twitter that it said showed damage after attacks on Aleppo’s Qaterji neighborhood. “The goal of the operation will be to expand the area under the army’s control”.
His remarks come as fighting in Syria resumes with unabated intensity after a US-Russian-brokered ceasefire was declared by the Syrian army on Monday as having failed.
But the ceasefire was put at risk by the bombing of Syrian government forces by US-led coalition warplanes in Deir ez-Zor on Saturday, during which some 62 soldiers were killed and 100 more wounded. Awaiting worldwide action and genuine political progress, we must work on the humanitarian dimension.
As rescuers in the Syrian city of Aleppo searched for survivors between bursts of bombardment, the father of one trapped toddler tore frantically at the debris. Calamity that could have been averted by reason and compassion.
In Damascus, the seat of Assad’s power, where life goes on almost as normal and the six-year-war feels like a distant inconvenience, many cling to his rule, fearing the alternative.
The French foreign minister Jean-Marc Ayrault accused president Assad and his allies of seeking to break Syria apart, but also criticised Washington for excluding America’s allies from the diplomatic search for a solution to the conflict.
Alice reported on All Things Considered that local residents say the new offensive brings the violence in Aleppo to a new level.
The Aleppo airstrikes came shortly after U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry met with members of the White Helmets. “We can not continue on the same path any longer”.
But the West’s failure to silence the guns of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad could also have a more insidious effect over time: the merger of mainstream rebel groups in Aleppo with Jabhat Fatah al-Sham (JFS), an al Qaeda-affiliated group formerly known as the Nusra Front. In addition, the United States had to press the rebel forces to separate from the extremist elements who have been fighting alongside them. Many were injured and others are missing, the observatory said.
The army made attempts to advance in several districts but was repelled said Zakaria Malahifji, a Turkey-based official for one of the main Aleppo factions.
“This means welcome to hell”, said Abdulkafi Al-Hamdo, a teacher who lives in rebel-held Aleppo.
For weeks, mainstream rebel groups resisted efforts to merge with JFS, fearing that it would expose them to American airstrikes. During the brief truce, trucks carrying aid sat idle on the nearby Turkish border, awaiting permits and safety guarantees.
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The truce foundered on Monday with an attack on an aid convoy, which Washington blamed on Russian warplanes. “They’re the biggest thing we’ve seen since the beginning of the violence, not in Aleppo and not anywhere else”, he added. “When that will happen, frankly that is out of our hands”.
