Aleppo airstrikes 'kill at least 50' civilians in rebel-held areas

Aleppo airstrikes 'kill at least 50' civilians in rebel-held areas

Rebel-held eastern Aleppo has again been bombarded from the air – less than a week after a UN warning that it could be completely destroyed before Christmas.

Residents and rescue workers reported at least 50 civilian deaths in the city and surrounding villages, according to the Reuters news agency.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Russian jets had been involved.

"There is renewed bombardment and it is heavy," said Zakaria Malhifji, from the Fastaqim rebel group.

He said the Bustan al-Qasr neighbourhood had been worst affected, with residents reporting that a medical centre and children's playground had been hit.

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Image: Aleppo: Death of a city

The activist-run Aleppo Today TV station said bunker-busting bombs had been used.

Nearby villages were also affected by the attacks.

An intensive aerial campaign resumed when a recent ceasefire collapsed after only a week.

The latest bombardment is said to be the heaviest since the Syrian regime said last Wednesday that attacks would be eased, partly to allow civilians to leave opposition-held eastern neighbourhoods.

Rebels could also go with their families, the Syrian government said, if they laid down their arms. But the insurgents dismissed it as a deception.

Scale of destruction in Aleppo from above

Amid the gloom, there was one piece of good news: amateur video showed a boy being pulled from the rubble in the al-Fardos neighbourhood of Aleppo.

Rescue workers from the Syrian Civil Defence, also known as the White Helmets, shouted "Allahu Akbar" (God is greatest) as they pulled him free, suggesting he was still alive.

Last week, the UN special envoy to Syria warned that eastern Aleppo could be totally destroyed in just 10 weeks.

Staffan de Mistura said that "cruel, constant" military activity meant that thousands of citizens were likely to be killed.

The besieged population of 275,000 - including 100,000 children - is in desperate need of aid supplies.

Boris Johnson at the centre of a row with Russia

Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson has called for "demonstrations outside the Russian embassy" over its bombing of targets in Syria.

He was speaking during an emergency debate in Parliament over the crisis engulfing the country - and Aleppo in particular.

But Russia hit back on Wednesday, saying his accusations that it had hit an aid convoy in Syria amounted to "Russophobic hysteria".

Aleppo was not the only area attacked on Tuesday.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and state media reported the shelling of a school by insurgents had killed at least five people, including children, in the southern city of Daraa

Daraa is also split between Syrian government and rebel control.

Syria's official news agency, SANA, also reported shelling by opposition groups in Damascus. Several mortar shells reportedly landed in the residential Qasaa district, wounding a number of people.

:: Aleppo: Death of a City - special coverage all day on Thursday on Sky News.</s>BEIRUT (Reuters) - Russian jets resumed heavy bombing of rebel-held eastern Aleppo on Tuesday after several days of relative calm, a rebel official and the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said.

Air strikes mostly hit the Bustan al-Qasr neighborhood, Zakaria Malhifji of the Aleppo-based Fastaqim rebel group told Reuters.

“There is renewed bombardment and it is heavy,” he said.

The Observatory said the death toll from bombing in Bustan al-Qasr, Fardous and other neighborhoods rose to at least 25, with scores of wounded.

At least 50 civilians were killed by strikes on the rebel-held part of the city and nearby villages controlled by insurgents, residents and rescue workers said. In Bustan al Qasr, residents said, the strikes hit a medical center and a children’s playground.

The Syrian army, backed by Iranian-backed militias, also said it had consolidated its control of the al Jandoul traffic circle at a major road intersection on the northern outskirts of Aleppo.

Moscow and Damascus reduced air raids in the northern city last week. The Syrian army said that was partly to allow civilians to leave opposition-held eastern neighborhoods.

The Syrian government said rebels holed up in Aleppo can leave with their families if they lay down their arms. Insurgents denounced that offer as a deception.

President Bashar al-Assad seeks the complete recapture of Aleppo, Syria’s biggest city before the 5 1/2-year war, which has been divided between government and opposition control for years.

Assad’s Russian allies have meanwhile built up its forces in Syria after a brief ceasefire collapsed last month.

Civil defence members and men inspect a site damaged after an airstrike in the besieged rebel-held al-Qaterji neighbourhood of Aleppo, Syria October 11, 2016. REUTERS/Abdalrhman Ismail

Since Russia intervened in the war a year ago, the government’s side has gained the upper hand on numerous fronts, including Aleppo, where the opposition-held sector has been completely encircled for weeks.

Insurgents have advanced elsewhere, including in Hama province further south, where they captured a series of towns and villages last month. But in recent days government forces have regained some of that ground.

In the southern city of Deraa, which is split between government and rebel control, insurgent shelling of a school killed at least five people, including children, on Tuesday, the Observatory and state media reported.

Rebels denied they fired at the school. Residents reported the same death toll.

Near the Turkish border, rebels backed by Turkey and a U.S.-led coalition closed in on the Islamic State-held village of Dabiq, the site of an apocalyptic prophesy central to the militant group’s ideology.

Free Syrian Army (FSA) rebel groups have been pushing south into Islamic State’s territory in an operation backed by Turkey since Aug. 24, and have taken more villages near Dabiq in recent days.

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But hundreds of mines planted by the militants were delaying their progress, rebels said. The militants even retook the villages of Ihtimlat and Kafra only hours after the FSA fighters seized them, rebels said.

“They planted along their front lines of defense hundreds of mines,” a rebel from the Failaq al Sham group said. Now the goal of FSA forces was to retake the town of Soran, an Islamic State stronghold in the area, before moving on to Dabiq, he said.</s>BEIRUT — Syrian opposition activists said on Thursday that more than a dozen airstrikes were carried out overnight on rebel-held parts of the northern city of Aleppo.

The airstrikes came a day after an air raid hit east Aleppo's biggest market, killing at least 15 people and leveling buildings.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported more than 20 airstrikes on eastern Aleppo, adding that clashes were taking place between government forces and insurgents on the city's northern edge.

The Halab Today TV channel reported "intense" airstrikes on rebel-held parts of Syria's largest city, adding that cluster bombs were being dropped.

The Observatory said Wednesday that at least 358 civilians have been killed in eastern Aleppo since a U.S. and Russian-brokered truce collapsed on Sept. 19. The U.N. says over 100 children have been killed since then.</s>Air strikes targeting rebel-held districts of Aleppo intensified on Tuesday, after a lull of several days which the Syrian army said was designed to allow civilians to leave.

The city has been divided between government and rebel control for years. "The bombing has been very intense," Selmo told Reuters on Thursday, speaking from Syria in an area outside Aleppo city.

The Syrian army launched an assault to take rebel-held areas of Aleppo last month with Russian air support and Iranian-backed militias.</s>Regime ally Russia carried out its heaviest strikes in days on Syria’s Aleppo on Tuesday, as rebel fire killed at least five schoolchildren in the war-torn country’s south.

The raids in Aleppo killed 25 civilians, a monitor said, and caused massive damage in several residential areas of the city’s rebel-held east.

Russian President Vladimir Putin meanwhile cancelled a trip to Paris in a row over the violence in Syria, where Moscow is helping President Bashar al-Assad’s forces in an operation to recapture all of Aleppo.

Syria’s army announced a bid last month to retake the city, which has been divided since mid-2012.

The assault began after the collapse of a short-lived truce negotiated by Washington and Moscow, and has seen the besieged east of the city come under fierce aerial assault.

The army said last Wednesday it would reduce its bombardment, after days of attacks that killed hundreds and destroyed the largest remaining hospital in the east.

But an AFP correspondent and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported renewed heavy bombing on Tuesday.

“This is the heaviest Russian bombardment since the Syrian regime announced it would reduce the bombardment” last week, said Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman.

The 25 dead, among them four children, were killed in raids in east Aleppo including in the districts of Bustan al-Qasr and Fardos, the Observatory said.

An AFP correspondent in Bustan al-Qasr saw a multi-storey residential building that had been destroyed, its facade sheared off.

White Helmets rescuers removed two lifeless toddlers from the building and wrapped them in sheets.

Footage by the Aleppo Media Centre activist group showed a toddler, blood smeared across her face, lying on a hospital bed.

An elderly man near her wailed in pain as a team of medics bent over him, calling out instructions to the nurses.

The Britain-based Observatory — which relies on a network of sources inside Syria for its information — says it determines what planes carried out raids according to their type, location, flight patterns and the munitions involved.

Backed by Russian air raids, government forces have been advancing street by street into rebel-held parts of Aleppo.

More than 300 people, mostly civilians, have been killed by government or Russian fire since the operation began, according to the Observatory.

Rebel forces were also firing on western government-held districts of Aleppo on Tuesday, with state news agency SANA reporting four dead and 14 wounded in rebel bombing of Hamdaniyeh district.

SANA also reported an unidentified number of injuries in a mortar shell attack near the famous Umayyad mosque in the Old City of Damascus.

An AFP correspondent reported intense mortar fire raining down on several neighbourhoods of the capital.

- France-Russia tensions -

 

 Elsewhere, state media said five children were among six people killed in rebel rocket fire on a primary school in the southern city of Daraa.

The Observatory also reported the deaths, saying at least 25 people were wounded and the death toll could rise.

Rebels hold most of Daraa province, but the regional capital is largely controlled by the government.

The assault on Aleppo has sparked international condemnation, with fears for the fate of more than 250,000 civilians trapped inside the east of the city since the government imposed a siege in mid-July.

French President Francois Hollande Sunday described the Aleppo campaign as a war crime, a day after Moscow vetoed a French-drafted UN resolution on a halt to air strikes on the city.

In a sign of escalating tensions, the Kremlin Tuesday said Putin had called off an October 19 visit to inaugurate an Orthodox church in Paris, but was “ready to visit when it is comfortable for President Hollande”.

Moscow would “wait for when that comfortable time comes,” said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov.

The French presidency said it had told the Kremlin Hollande would only meet Putin for a “working meeting” on Syria.

British foreign minister Boris Johnson meanwhile called for anti-war campaigners to protest outside the Russian embassy in London.

Johnson said the “wells of outrage are growing exhausted” and anti-war groups were not expressing sufficient outrage over Aleppo.

More than 300,000 people have been killed in Syria since the conflict began in March 2011, and more than half the population has been displaced.</s>Syrian and Russian military officials could not immediately be reached for comment on the latest air strikes.

The Civil Defence, a rescue service operating in rebel-held areas, said on its Twitter feed the air strikes had killed 25 people, 15 of them at a market place in the Fardous district.

Heavy aerial bombardment of eastern Aleppo resumed on Tuesday after a pause of several days which the Syrian army said was designed to allow civilians to leave.

President Bashar al-Assad, with military backing from Russia and Iranian-backed militias, aims to take back all of Aleppo, which was Syria's biggest city before the outbreak of war in 2011. The city has been divided between government and rebel control for years.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based organization that reports on the war, also reported heavy air strikes against the rebel-held Eastern Ghouta area near Damascus.

A Syrian military source said that warplanes had struck several locations to the south and southwest of Aleppo.

Western states have condemned the Syrian government and Russia over their latest onslaught against rebel-held Aleppo. The Syrian army has denied any targeting of civilians but France and the United States have called for an investigation into what they said amounted to war crimes by Syrian and Russian forces in the city.

Russia on Saturday vetoed a French-drafted United Nations Security Council resolution that would have demanded an immediate end to air strikes and military flights over Syria's Aleppo city.</s>An air strike hit the biggest market on the rebel-held side of Syria’s Aleppo yesterday, killing at least 15 people.

The strike came as rescuers were still sifting through the rubble from air raids that killed dozens the day before.

Activists said the early afternoon strike destroyed several shops in the besieged eastern part of the city, which has been the target of a massive Russian-backed Syrian offensive since the collapse of a ceasefire last month.

The latest strikes have shattered a relative lull that has held for three days in the area, where hospitals, underground shelters and buildings had been targeted for weeks.

On Tuesday, Russian or Syrian aircraft bombed several neighbourhoods, killing at least 41 people, including five children, according to the Syrian Civil Defence, a group of volunteer first responders, and the activist-run Aleppo Media Centre. Both groups said 15 people were killed in yesterday’s strike.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which relies on a network of contacts in Syria, gave lower tolls for the attacks but said they were likely to rise. Varying reports of casualties are common in the chaotic aftermath of attacks in Syria.

The Observatory said at least 358 civilians have been killed in eastern Aleppo since a US- and Russian-brokered truce collapsed on 19 September. The UN said more than 100 children have been killed in the campaign, which has also seen a limited ground offensive.

Syria Civil Defence workers pulled at least one boy alive from under the rubble on Tuesday, amid cheers from onlookers. Jamil Habboush, 13, emerged covered in dust and dazed from the flattened building, gripping his rescuer tightly. The boy had lost his father and brother in previous bombings. His mother survived but remains in critical condition, said Ibrahim al-Haj, a member of the Syrian Civil Defence, known as the White Helmets.</s>More than 65 killed in last 3 days in Aleppo

BEIRUT — Overnight shelling and more than a dozen airstrikes on rebel-held parts of Aleppo killed at least 11 people Thursday, bringing the death toll in the last three days to at least 65, according to an opposition activist group and Aleppo's volunteer civil defense forces.

Rebel shelling of government-held areas in the divided city also killed two girls at a school. The airstrikes came a day after an air raid hit eastern Aleppo's biggest market, killing at least 15 people and leveling buildings.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported more than 20 airstrikes on eastern Aleppo that killed seven while shelling killed four, adding that clashes were taking place between government forces and insurgents on the city's northern edge.

The Halab Today TV channel reported "intense" airstrikes on rebel-held parts of Syria's largest city, adding that cluster bombs were being dropped.

Ibrahim Alhaj, a member of the Syrian Civil Defense, said the airstrikes killed 13 and wounded 25. He said some people remained buried under the rubble and search operations are underway.

State media reported that two girls were killed and five were wounded in rebel shelling of western government-held neighborhoods in Aleppo that hit a school in the Suleimaniyah neighborhood.

The Observatory said Wednesday that at least 358 civilians have been killed in eastern Aleppo since a U.S. and Russian-brokered truce collapsed on Sept. 19. The U.N. says over 100 children have been killed in the campaign, which has also included a limited ground offensive.

Near the capital Damascus, government buses gathered outside the suburbs of Qudsaya and Hammah where they were supposed to evacuate dozens of civilians to the rebel-held northwestern province of Idlib, the Observatory and state news agency SANA said.

The Observatory said the evacuation is part of an agreement between rebel factions in the two suburbs and the government that would include giving partial amnesty to some 300 fighters from the area. It said that after the evacuation ends, government forces would take control of the two areas.

Such evacuations have been carried out in other suburbs of the capital in recent months, including Daraya and Moadamiyeh.</s>Air strikes mostly hit the Bustan al-Qasr neighborhood, Zakaria Malhifji of the Aleppo-based Fastaqim rebel group told Reuters.

"There is renewed bombardment and it is heavy," he said.

The Observatory said at least eight people were killed in Bustan al-Qasr and Fardous neighborhoods.

Moscow and Damascus reduced air raids in the northern city last week. The Syrian army said it was partly to allow civilians to leave opposition-held eastern neighborhoods.

The Syrian government said rebels holed up in Aleppo can leave with their families if they lay down their arms.

President Bashar al-Assad seeks the complete recapture of Aleppo, Syria's biggest city before the 5-1/2-year war, and which has been divided between government and opposition control for years.

Assad's ally Russia has meanwhile built up its forces in Syria since a brief ceasefire collapsed last month.

Russia's intervention a year ago has helped the government side gain the upper hand against rebels on many frontlines in the Syrian conflict, including Aleppo where the opposition-held sector has been completely encircled for weeks.

Insurgents had advanced elsewhere against government forces and their allies, including in Hama province further south where they captured a series of towns and villages last month. Government forces have regained some of those areas in recent days, however.

In the southern city of Deraa, which is split between government and rebel control, insurgent shelling of a school killed at least five people including children on Tuesday, the Observatory and state media reported.

A separate mortar attack hit a government complex in the heart of the city with reports of casualties, a Deraa resident said, adding that mosques were appealing for blood donations.</s>Russian jets resumed heavy bombing of rebel-held eastern Aleppo on Tuesday after several days of relative calm, a rebel official and the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said.

At least 14 people were killed after air strikes in eastern Aleppo, while six other people including children died when a school was shelled by insurgents in southern Syria.

Shelling was also reported in the capital, Damascus, with mortar shells fired by opposition groups landing in the residential Qasaa district and close to the Umayyad Mosque, wounding an unspecified number of people.

In Aleppo, air strikes mostly hit the Bustan al-Qasr neighbourhood, Zakaria Malhifji of the Aleppo-based Fastaqim rebel group told Reuters. “There is renewed bombardment and it is heavy,” he said.

The observatory said at least eight people were killed in Bustan al-Qasr and Fardous neighbourhoods.

Moscow and Damascus reduced air raids in the northern city last week. The Syrian army said it was partly to allow civilians to leave opposition-held eastern neighbourhoods.

The Syrian government said rebels holed up in Aleppo can leave with their families if they lay down their arms. Insurgents denounced that offer as a deception.

President Bashar al-Assad seeks the complete recapture of Aleppo, Syria’s biggest city before the 5½-year war, and which has been divided between government and opposition control for years. Mr Assad’s ally Russia has meanwhile built up its forces in Syria since a brief ceasefire collapsed last month.

Russia’s intervention a year ago has helped the government side gain the upper hand against rebels on many frontlines in the Syrian conflict, including Aleppo where the opposition-held sector has been completely encircled for weeks.

Insurgents had advanced elsewhere against government forces and their allies, including in Hama province further south where they captured a series of towns and villages last month. Government forces have regained some of those areas in recent days, however.

In the southern city of Deraa, which is split between government and rebel control, insurgent shelling of a school killed at least six people including children, the observatory and state media reported.

A separate mortar attack hit a government complex in the heart of the city with reports of casualties, a Deraa resident said, adding that mosques were appealing for blood donations.

Meanwhile, the leader of Lebanon’s Hizbullah movement, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, said the Middle East was in a phase of escalating tension and there appeared to be no prospect of a political solution to the war in Syria.

Nasrallah, whose Iranian-backed group is fighting alongside Mr Assad, criticised Saudi Arabia over its military campaign in Yemen, saying the Saudi leadership was pushing their country to “the abyss”.

Nasrallah was making a rare live televised speech before thousands of supporters in Beirut, to mark Shia Islam’s annual Ashura commemorations. Speaking about Syria, Mr Nasrallah said “the theatre was open to more tension, escalation and confrontation”. – (Reuters/PA)
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and a rebel official report that Russian jets have resumed heavy bombing, and, in total, have now killed at least 50 civilians in villages surrounding rebel-held eastern Aleppo.