A boy inspects a damaged site after airstrikes on the rebel-held Tariq al-Bab neighbourhood of Aleppo, Syria.
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A bombing campaign in Syria’s rebel-held districts of Aleppo city intensified Friday, targeting several neighborhoods and centers of the award-winning volunteer civil defense group known as the White Helmets, as the government announced a new offensive in the area.
The United States, Britain and France requested the session in the wake of the regime’s military push to retake rebel-held parts of eastern Aleppo in recent days.
U.K.’s United Nations ambassador, Matthew Rycroft, said, “that commitment resembles much of Syria: broken, lifeless”.
“If people are serious about wanting a peaceful outcome to this war, then they should cease and desist bombing innocent women and children, cease cutting off water and laying siege in medieval terms to an entire community, and work with the global community in order to be able to bring peace to people who are starving – literally starving, but also starving for the possibilities of a future without chlorine dropping on them out of the sky, barrel bombs, and indiscriminate bombing”.
Residents and a monitor reported heavy air raids overnight and early today on the besieged east of the city, which Syria’s army has pledged to retake. They are widely believed to be accompanied by Russian air strikes. A member of the city’s forensic team, Mohammed Abu Jaafar, said he had documented nine deaths since late Thursday, including five women and two children.
The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said more than 100 people, mostly civilians, have been killed since the Syrian army started its offensive Wednesday and the U.S.
Air strikes and all different kinds of rockets have hit different districts, leaving dozens of people injured and killed. “These bombs are not busting bunkers; they are demolishing ordinary people looking for any last refuge of safety”. “One person was killed when he disturbed one and it exploded”, he added.
“It tore him apart”.
The US Ambassador to the United Nations accused Russian Federation of engaging in barbarism in Syria.
Johnson said Sunday that Russian air power may have deliberately targeted the civilian convoy on September 19.
Aleppo, Syria’s largest city and one-time commercial center, has been contested since July 2012, but in recent weeks its eastern rebel-held neighborhoods have been under siege by government forces and their allies.
A weeklong cease-fire agreed upon between the United States and Russian Federation ended Monday and efforts to revive the so-called cessation of hostilities (CoH) failed.
Five years on, more than 400,000 Syrians are estimated to have been killed, and nearly 11 million Syrians – half the country’s prewar population – have been displaced from their homes.
Successive attempts to reach a political solution have failed, and the latest bid by Moscow and Washington has virtually collapsed, despite ongoing talks to save it.
A Syrian military official said Friday that airstrikes and shelling in Aleppo would continue for an extended period and the operation would expand into a ground invasion of rebel-held districts.
The United States and its European allies said Saturday that it is up to Russian Federation to bring about a truce in its ally Syria through “extraordinary steps”.
“The burden is on Russian Federation to prove it is willing and able to take extraordinary steps to salvage diplomatic efforts”, read a joint statement from Britain, France, Germany, Italy, the United States, and European Union.
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“Patience with Russia’s continued inability or unwillingness to adhere to its commitments is not unlimited”, the so-called Quint group said.
