Beirut – Air strikes killed at least 12 civilians including children in two rebel-held neighborhoods of Syria’s Aleppo city on Thursday, a monitoring group said.
Nine people were killed in the Tariq al-Bab neighborhood, and another three in the district of Salhin in the east of the city, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported.
The Britain-based group said it was unclear whether the strikes were carried out by warplanes of the Syrian government or its ally Russia.
Video obtained by AFP of the aftermath of the attack in Salhin showed smoke billowing from the front of a multi-story building shorn of its facade by the strikes.
Aleppo’s divide
The charred skeleton of a car, its windows blown out, sat in front of the building.
Civil defense workers battled a fire sparked by the attack, while civilians with ladders retrieved belongings from the ruins.
“Total destruction,” said resident Jomaa Hassan, gesturing to a smoking building behind him.
“These are civilians: a taxi driver, a municipal worker. These are the terrorists in their eyes.”
Aleppo city is divided roughly between government control in the west and rebel control in the east.
Last week, government forces advanced to within firing range of the only remaining supply route into the rebel-held east, effectively cutting it off and prompting food shortages and spiraling prices.
AP reported: Fighting in the deeply contested city has intensified over the last week after government and allied troops closed off the Castello road, the lifeline to the rebel-held areas, effectively sealing off those districts where tens of thousands of people live. The U.N. estimates that 300,000 people depend on Castello road.
Al-Haj said dozens of people attempted to use the Castello road Thursday, challenging the government blockade, and ended up wounded when they came under government fire. The exact number of those wounded is not yet known, he said.
The violence comes ahead of a meeting Thursday between U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov in Moscow aimed at discussing prospects of reducing the violence and moving toward a political transition in Syria.
The U.N. envoy to Syrian Staffan de Mistura said he wants to avoid repeated failed talks. “To get something effective we need the help of the two co-chairs, because that will give a huge chance for these talks to not just be another Geneva II which I am determined to avoid,” he said in reference to Washington and Moscow.
Meanwhile, the U.N. Humanitarian aid adviser Jan Egeland said the eastern part of Aleppo city, one of the rebel-held areas, is already under full military encirclement with no assistance going in and no freedom of movement for civilians, make it entitled to be labelled a besieged area. However, three months need to pass for an area to be considered besieged, he said, appealing for sparing it such a label.
“We really need to avoid eastern Aleppo becoming the 19th and biggest besieged area. There is ample time to avoid that happening,” Egeland said during a press conference in Geneva Thursday.
In late June, The United Nations estimated that 5 million Syrians are in need of humanitarian aid and are living in hard-to-reach areas, nearly a million more than the previous figure because of increased insecurity.
On Thursday, an international aid convoy reached the besieged town of al-Waer in the central Homs province, bringing aid to 75,000 people, including flour, medical supplies, water and sanitation material.
The Observatory also reported that IS militants shot down a plane near the Deir el-Zour military airport, which is controlled by government forces, adding that the militant group had later “crucified” the body of the pilot.
It wasn’t clear when the plane was downed.
Source: AFP, AP, 14 July 2016
