The camp has a strategic importance as it overlooks several rebel-held areas in eastern Aleppo, which has become under tight government siege after the Syrian army captured Castello.
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Almost 30 civilians including several children were killed and dozens wounded in the raids by Russian warplanes and regime aircraft, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitoring group, said. The Local Coordination Committees, another monitoring group, said 49 were killed on Saturday alone. Selmo said the toll was more than 100.
At least 30 neighbourhoods were targeted, Al Jazeera’s Amr al-Halabi reporting from the city said, adding that the relentless bombardment was hampering the ability of rescue workers to help civilians caught up in the fighting.
Kerry said he would wait for Lavrov to tell him Friday if Russian Federation would suspend airstrikes for a significant period of time. Abu Jaafar said it was impossible to document casualties and injuries Friday because of the intensity of the bombing. “Aleppo is being wiped out”.
“We have four centres in eastern Aleppo”. Wounded people have flooded into clinics, where many are being treated on the floor because of a lack of stretchers.
A Western diplomat said on Friday the only way for the government to take the area quickly would be to totally destroy it in “such a monstrous atrocity that it would resonate for generations”. “No aid, including urgent medical supplies, is allowed to enter”. “Today the bombardment is more violent, with a larger number of planes”. “It is very, very intense”, Alhaj said.
The United States and Russian Federation are on opposite sides of the 5-1/2-year-old Syrian civil war in which more than 400,000 people have died and 11 million displaced. -Russian impasse was to persuade Russia to renew a seven-day ceasefire, but that Lavrov had shown no inclination to accept it. Lavrov said the US had originally asked for three days on Wednesday, which Moscow had accepted, before on Thursday asking for a seven-day ceasefire.
In retaliation, Unicef says, a nearby station pumping water to the rest of Aleppo has been switched off.
Also Friday, a Syrian military official said airstrikes and shelling in Aleppo might continue for an extended period and the operation will expand into a ground invasion of rebel-held districts.
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.
“Breaking the siege through the Castello Road has become very hard”, Yassin Abu Raed, an opposition activist based in Aleppo province, told The Associated Press.
The Syrian Defense Ministry announced Thursday the commencement of a new offensive against rebel-held areas in eastern Aleppo, urging the civilians to leave immediately and the rebels to lay down their weapons. The camp, which is nearly empty and largely destroyed, has witnessed intense fighting and bombardment in recent years. It said “the criminal campaign aims to settle global accounts at the expense of Syrians’ blood”.
Russian Federation supports the Syrian government, while the USA backs the opposition.
A truce deal negotiated between Moscow and Washington brought a few days of respite in Aleppo earlier this month, but no humanitarian aid.
Damascus and allies including Shi’ite militia from Iran, Iraq and Lebanon have encircled rebel-held areas of Aleppo gradually this year, achieving their long-held objective of fully besieging the area this summer with Russian air support.
The apparent collapse of USA -backed peacemaking may mark a turning point in the five-year civil war, with the government and its Russian and Iranian allies now seemingly determined to crush the rebellion in its biggest urban stronghold.
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“Depriving children of water puts them at risk of catastrophic outbreaks of water-borne diseases”, Singer warned in her statement, released late Friday.
