Fighting in Syria’s second city has intensified after regime forces cut off the only road into the rebel-held east, trapping 300,000 people.
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“These damages occur when the temperatures are really high, putting the children in danger and increasing the chances of generating diseases”, declared the UNICEF ambassador Hanna Singer.
“The security situation has been too grave, too hard even for the very, very fearless United Nations and humanitarian partners people on the ground who are determined to deliver”.
At the United Nations, humanitarian chief Stephen O’Brien said 48 hours and a two-lane road are the minimum requirement for getting sufficient humanitarian aid into Aleppo.
The well and tank water in Aleppo, “is not almost enough to sustain the needs of the population”, according Yacoub El Hillo, U.N. Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator for Syria, and Kevin Kennedy, Regional Humanitarian Coordinator for the Syria Crisis.
Dr. Zaher Sahloul, a Syrian-American doctor from Chicago, said medical facilities in eastern Aleppo are routinely targeted, creating a situation where people are dying from treatable conditions for lack of medical care and basic supplies.
“The UN is extremely concerned that the consequences will be dire for millions of civilians if the electricity and water networks are not immediately repaired”, they said.
At the same time, they cut the main supply route to government-held western Aleppo, raising the prospect of insurgents besieging those areas.
Accusations involving use of chlorine and other poisonous gases are not uncommon in Syria’s civil war, and both sides have denied using them while blaming the other for using it as a weapon of war.
It is not clear whether the rebels will be able to keep their new gains, but the breach causes a dent in the Syrian government’s new confidence and territorial expansion, bolstered by Russian air support.
“The battle for Aleppo is arguably the most emotive and strategic of any across Syria”, Charles Lister, senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, wrote in an online analysis titled “Aleppo – The Mother of All Battles”.
“Because of the massacres that civilians suffer, doctors are exposed to the most horrifying scenes every single day”, he told AFP in a hospital in the eastern district. “We are waiting for more reinforcements before it begins, and we are trying to find the weakest points in our enemy’s lines”. Over the weekend, their fortunes shifted, and Nusra took an artillery academy, reopening their districts and threatening the half of the city under government control.
Government forces and allies of the Assad regime, including fighters from the Lebanese Hezbollah movement, have launched fierce counter-offensives and heavily bombarded opposition-held areas.
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Prices of all goods have increased fourfold just the day after the rebels closed off al-Ramuseh, according to pro-rebel monitor group the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
