The air campaign overnight came after Syria’s military command announced it was launching operations in Aleppo’s rebel-held eastern quarters, raising concerns of imminent ground operations.
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We feel the earth trembling and shaking under our feet. They said the indiscriminate bombing of civilians must stop.
Ammar al-Salmo, head of Aleppo’s Civil Defence Force, a volunteer rescue squad, said that three of his group’s centres had been bombed and that some of their rescue vehicles had been knocked out.
Entire apartment blocks were flattened, overwhelming rescue teams from the White Helmets civil defence organisation.
The strike killed about 20 people, including the Red Crescent’s regional director Omar Barakat, said the International Committee of the Red Cross.
Video footage showed buildings on fire and a journalist for the AFP news agency said his street in the Bustan al-Qasr district was burning. Some 300 rebels and their families piled onto buses in the neighborhood of Al-Waer after accepting the terms of government surrender deal to leave their homes in return for safe passage to rebel-held territory further north. Other locals said the latest raids were destroying underground shelters people had built.
The Syrian air force, since Monday has stepped up its bombing of rebel-held areas, and both Russian Federation and Syria have been implicated in the attack on the relief convoy which has been deemed a potential war crime by the UN.
The army also said it would take “all measures to facilitate the reception” of civilians and that those who arrive at its checkpoints would not be arrested. “The next few hours, days maximum are crucial for making it or breaking it”, de Mistura said.
“The timing of the ground operation will depend on the results of the strikes and the situation on the ground”.
Capturing the rebel-held half of Syria’s largest city would be the biggest victory of the war for the government side, which has already achieved its strongest position in years thanks to Russian and Iranian support.
The rebels laid siege to western districts after cutting the worldwide road to Aleppo in 2014, a siege broken later by the Syrian army with the help of Hezbollah.
The United States and Russian Federation failed in talks to reestablish a cease-fire in Syria as warplanes bombarded rebel-held areas of Aleppo, killing dozens of people.
“We’re evaluating some mutual ideas in a constructive way”, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said before a meeting Asia-Pacific ministers on the sidelines of the annual gathering of world leaders at the United Nations.
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This comes as the U.S.is trying to revive a weeklong truce that fell apart on Monday. The United Nations added that 18 of the convoy’s 31 trucks were damaged in the bombing.
