“Fierce fighting now continues in Sheikh Maqsood, the militants are using armored vehicles there”, he said, adding on Saturday “in Sheikh Maqsood were destructions, and dozens civilians were injured”.
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Abdel Rahman said rocket fire on government-held areas of the city overnight caused several casualties, but he was unable to provide an exact toll.
“They [the US] are telling us not to hit it [al-Nusra Front], because there are also “normal” opposition groups [on those territories]”, Lavrov said in an interview with local Russian media that was published on the Russian Foreign Ministry’s website.
Full control of Aleppo city would be a huge prize for President Bashar al-Assad.
Another five civilians were killed in two other districts and on the city’s outskirts.
Officials have stressed the challenges and risks of aid operations in the skies above a country at war.
Thermobaric bombs are far more destructive that conventional explosives due to their extremely powerful blast while barrel bombs are improvised devices that have been used to devastating effect in Syria, where they are typically dropped by helicopter on residential districts.
The United Nations will on Sunday present a formal request to the Syrian government to approve airdrops, diplomats at the closed Security Council meeting said.
A truce brokered by Russian Federation and the United States between the government and non-militant rebels has been violated almost continuously around Aleppo.
A Russian ceasefire monitoring center in Syria says more than 2,000 militants have gathered in a northern neighborhood of the embattled city of Aleppo.
Despite a Russia- and US -brokered truce in Syria that began on February 27, fighting has continued to rage in many areas, particularly around the city of Aleppo, trapping civilians in the cross-fire between government and opposition forces.
A rebel victory there would inflict one of the largest strategic defeats on the IS group since it proclaimed its rule over territory in Iraq and Syria two years ago.
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In the interview, Lavrov said that Russian Federation believes that taking specific and more effective measures to fight the Islamic State (IS, former ISIS/ISIL) and al-Nusra Front terrorist groups should be the top priority for Russian Federation and the U.S. if the Syrian crisis is to be resolved.
