Residents of the rebel-held half of the city say warplanes have unleashed unprecedented firepower.
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In a statement, the Foreign Ministry said it strongly condemned the attacks over the past few days targeting Aleppo, which killed over 300 civilians, injuring hundreds more.
A correspondent for the French news agency Agence France-Presse described one airstrike, at a market in the Bustan al-Qasr neighborhood, which left seven people dead and multiple body parts strewn at the site.
“In many areas, the wounded and sick have nowhere to go at all – they are simply left to die”, said Carlos Francisco, Medecins Sans Frontieres head of mission in Syria.
The advance was the first sign that an intensive bombing campaign by Syrian and Russian jets that began Thursday night was working to bolster the position of the Syrian government’s forces.
The war pits Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, backed by Russia, Iran and Arab Shi’ite militias, against Sunni rebel groups, including some supported by Washington, Turkey and Gulf Arab states. Around 250,000 civilians are thought to remain trapped in eastern districts.
Western countries and global aid organisations say they fear for the lives of more than 250,000 people civilians believed to be trapped in the rebel-held zone of Aleppo, Syria’s biggest city, divided into opposition and government sectors for years.
This week’s death toll has now reached at least 180, the observer group said. Residents said that the ordnance appears to be more powerful than the bombs and missiles used in the past, causing “earthquake-like tremors”.
“Violence is preventing fix teams from reaching the station”.
The fall of Handarat to Syrian troops allied with pro-government Palestinian fighters pushes insurgents further away from Castello Road, a main artery leading to rebel-held parts of the city, which is now controlled by the government.
Syrian state media quoted a military official as saying that the bombardment was the prelude to a planned ground offensive.
“The shelling and the raids did not stop”.
Russian planes also continued their pounding of residential parts of Aleppo, with whole buildings flattened, according to rebels and residents.
A rebel commander said the blasts were the fiercest the city had faced.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is “appalled by the chilling military escalation” in Aleppo, his spokesperson said.
Syria’s military has used TOS-1 launchers a few times within the Civil War, but Russian Federation is as yet not confirmed to have done so, or indeed to even have deployed such weapons to Syria.
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Syria’s Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem addresses the United Nations General Assembly in the Manhattan borough of NY, U.S., September 24, 2016.
