“Can you hear it?”
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Earlier this week, tens of civilians left rebel-held areas upon the renewed calls of the Syrian authorities for people to abandon rebel-controlled areas in eastern Aleppo. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring body gave an initial death toll of 27.
“Unfortunately it continues. There are planes in the sky now”, Ammar al-Selmo, head of Civil Defence in the opposition-held east, told Reuters news agency.
“What’s happening now is annihilation in every sense of the word”, he told Reuters. Today the situation could not be more serious.
Almost two million civilians were without water in the devastated northern city after regime bombardment damaged a pumping station and rebels shut down another in retaliation, the United Nations said.
The capture of the Handarat camp a few kilometres marked the first major ground advance by the government in an offensive that rebels say has unleashed unprecedented firepower against their half of the city.
“The only way to take eastern Aleppo is by such a monstrous atrocity that it would resonate for generations”.
“It would be absolutely the stuff of myth and history”, he said.
US Secretary of State John Kerry (Left) and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov (Right) discussed the crisis in Syria on September 9, when the ceasefire was agreed by both sides.
“My fear is that the bombings of the last few hours in Aleppo show that the regime is actually playing the card of partitioning Syria and its backers are letting it happen”, French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayraud told reporters.
A Syrian military source told Reuters the operation announced late on Thursday was continuing according to plan.
The army urged civilians to distance themselves from “the positions of terrorist groups” and pledged that fleeing residents would not be detained.
A high-ranking military source confirmed the intense bombardment was in preparation for a ground assault. Additionally, the official stated that the operation would “include a ground offensive”.
The group says it has just two fire engines left for all of east Aleppo which, like its ambulances, are struggling to move around the city.
“Every missile makes an quake we feel regardless of how far off the bombardment is”, one Aleppo resident said.
But Lavrov said that it would be “senseless” to impose a new truce because the United States had failed to separate moderate rebel groups from jihadists.
The collapse of the ceasefire – the same fate as that of all previous efforts to halt a war that has killed hundreds of thousands of Syrians – appeared to have doomed the peace bid, probably the last chance for a settlement before US President Barack Obama leaves office in January.
Syrian regime forces seized ground from rebels north of Aleppo on Saturday, narrowing their siege on the city’s opposition-held east, as it came under violent air strikes in an offensive by the Russian-backed army.
Lavrov spoke about the terms that failed to be met by the United States which then led to a stall on the planned ceasefire, stating that that the US had failed to assure that Syrian rebels would separate themselves from the extremist militants of the “Qaeda-allied Nusra Front”.
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The Syrian army said in a statement that the rebels violated the week-long truce over 300 times, adding that the USA -led coalition struck positions of the Syrian army during the truce in Deir al-Zour, killing 90 soldiers, which was deemed by Russian Federation as the biggest violation to the truce. United Nations peace envoy Staffan de Mistura has warned of escalating violence.
