BEIRUT — The 6-year-old girl was found trapped under the rubble of her home, destroyed by an airstrike in Syria's rebel-held city of Aleppo. "Dust!" she wailed as rescue workers pried away the stones and debris on top of her, finally freeing her and placing her on a stretcher as she screamed for her father.

Bruised and battered but alive, Ghazl Qassem was among the lucky survivors of the attack earlier this week. Four days later, rescue workers were still digging Friday through the rubble of the apartment building after pulling out the bodies of 20 people, including nine children, most from Ghazl's family. They were searching for at least three others believed inside.

At least 96 children are among the 320 people killed in Aleppo since a cease-fire collapsed on Sept. 19, according to UNICEF, as Syrian and Russian warplanes barrage the city's eastern opposition , trying to crush more than five years of resistance there. Almost a third of the 840 people wounded over the same period are children, according to the World Health Organization.

"Aleppo is one of the most dangerous places in the world, and in the last week it has become perhaps the most dangerous place in the world for children." Juliette Touma, regional chief of communications for the U.N children's agency told The Associated Press.

Nearly 300,000 people — including 100,000 children — are trapped in Aleppo's rebel-held eastern districts, a pocket of resistance some eight miles long and three miles wide that civil workers say has been hit by 1,900 bombs in the past week. The campaign has wreaked destruction on hospitals, clinics, residential buildings, water stations and electric generators.

Parents desperately struggling to keep their families safe fear the threat of an imminent ground offensive. They hold little hope for the future, with no regular schooling and little access to nutritious food. Images of wounded and screaming children, covered in dust or being pulled out of rubble, have become a daily reality in Aleppo.

"We are totally resigned to God's will," said Khaled Sakka, a father of 10 children, all under the age of 14. He, his three wives and the children all sleep in one room in the middle of the house, the only safety measure they have against the nightly airstrikes.

"It is very difficult to know how many (children) are traumatized, but one would imagine every single one is impacted by the horrors, especially with the intensification of the violence in the past week," she said.

But the powerful bombs also threaten the underground shelters where civilians take refuge and where children go to school. For the past several years, most classes have been held in basements because of the constant fighting and threat of airstrikes.

"The use of bunker-busting bombs means there is literally nowhere we can keep children safe, " said Nick Finney of Save the Children, which runs 12 schools in eastern Aleppo, eight of them held underground. "We're now more likely to see children being pulled from the rubble or treated on the floor of a hospital than sitting at a school desk."

Medics say the death toll among children and other residents may be far higher than reported, since some families bury their dead without taking them to hospitals or morgues, and many victims remain buried in the rubble.

Dr. Hatem, a pediatrician, said women and children make up a large percentage of the victims because they are the ones who stay at home. As one of two pediatricians in besieged Aleppo, Hatem said he had an enormous load even before the last week's intensification of fighting, treating 80 to 120 children a day.

Now he's seeing a spike in wounded children in intensive care, from four or five a month to four or five a day. There is also a rise in aggressive among children and various signs of trauma such as bed-wetting or losing the ability to walk or talk, said Hatem, who gave only his last name out of security fears.

Ghazl Qassem was at home with her four siblings, her pregnant mother, cousins and grandmother when the bomb struck Tuesday around midday. Their apartment building is adjacent to a hospital in a with a number of specialized clinics; hospitals and clinics have been frequent targets in the recent campaign.

Since Tuesday's attack he has not moved from the rubble as the bodies of his family members have been pulled out one after the other, including his wife and three other children, said a , Tamim Selim.</s>Damascus, Syria (CNN) The United States is making preparations to suspend bilateral talks with Russia on Syria -- unless Moscow takes immediate steps to end the assault on Aleppo and restore a ceasefire, the US State Department said Wednesday.

US Secretary of State John Kerry said in a telephone call to his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, that the United States and its partners held Russia responsible for a drastic escalation in attacks that have put civilians at great risk.

Two hospitals in eastern Aleppo have been bombed "out of service," staff and activists said, as airstrikes pounded rebel-held parts of the northern Syrian city on Wednesday.

Hospital staff said the city's M2 and M10 hospitals were hit early Wednesday, putting intensive care units out of use.

Dr. Mounir Hakimi of the International Union of Medical Care and Relief Organizations and UK-based charity Syrian Relief told CNN that an airstrike hit the M10 hospital and shelling the M2.

"Anyone offering help to civilians now is being targeted," he said. "It's the message that any humanitarian response is not welcome."

At least six people were killed Wednesday morning when an airstrike struck a bakery as people lined up to buy bread, according to activists. They said the death toll was expected to rise.

Ground battles also raged Wednesday in Aleppo between the Syrian army and rebels.

The Syrian army said it took control of the central Farafra neighborhood in Aleppo's old city Tuesday, bringing it closer to the rebel-held eastern areas.

However, rebels and activists inside the besieged city told CNN there had been no ground assault in those areas.

There are conflicting reports of how many people were killed Tuesday in airstrikes on eastern Aleppo.

The rebel-held Aleppo Health Directorate reported 18 deaths, including six children. The activist group Aleppo Media Center said more than 30 people were killed, but it was unclear if some of those deaths were a result of earlier strikes or bodies pulled out of the rubble.

The UN children's agency, UNICEF, said Wednesday that at least 96 children had been killed and 223 injured in eastern Aleppo since Friday.

Hundreds of airstrikes have rocked the beleaguered city, home to more than 250,000 people, since the Syrian government, backed by Russia, announced a renewed, "comprehensive" offensive on Thursday.

The strikes on two of Aleppo's remaining hospitals likely will only compound the misery of civilians trapped there.

Hakimi, a UK-based orthopedic surgeon, told CNN that due to damage to the electricity and oxygen generators and the intensive care unit at M10, "the hospital as we speak is out of service. It's one of the main hospitals in Aleppo, so it's a big blow."

There were no casualties in the strike on M10, Hakimi said, but three patients were killed and two members of staff were injured at the M2 hospital. Five artillery shells struck that facility, he said, citing information from medical and humanitarian workers on the ground.

"The problem now is that there's no intensive care units in either hospital," Hakimi said. "They were already running at double capacity because during the weekend there was the most intensive airstrikes ever."

The remaining hospitals are already running at full capacity, he said. There may be more instances in which doctors perform surgery on patients as they lie on the ground due to lack of space, he said.

"We are so close to humanitarian catastrophe in Aleppo," Hakimi said.

The Syria Civil Defense group, a volunteer emergency medical service also known as the White Helmets, was also hit in Aleppo on the weekend, he said.

UNICEF said the 30 doctors who remain in Aleppo face an increasing number of trauma cases with hardly any medical equipment or medicine to treat the injured.

The agency cited a doctor on the ground as saying that children with low chances of survival are often left to die because of a lack of capacity or supplies.

"The children of Aleppo are trapped in a living nightmare," said UNICEF Deputy Executive Director Justin Forsyth. "There are no words left to describe the suffering they are experiencing."

On Wednesday, Pope Francis again appealed for peace in Syria and warned that those responsible for the bombing campaign in Aleppo will be "accountable to God" for their actions, according to Vatican Radio.

"In expressing my deep sorrow and lively concern for what is happening in that already battered city -- where children, the elderly, the sick, young and old, all are dying -- I renew my appeal to everyone to commit themselves with all their strength to the protection of civilians as an imperative and urgent obligation," Francis said, speaking at his general audience in Rome.

More than 200 airstrikes hit Aleppo over the weekend, killing more than 100 people and injuring hundreds more, according to Ammar al-Selmo of the Syria Civil Defense group.</s>BEIRUT (AP) — The 6-year-old girl was found trapped under the rubble of her home, destroyed by an airstrike in Syria’s rebel-held city of Aleppo. “Dust!” she wailed as rescue workers pried away the stones and debris on top of her, finally freeing her and placing her on a stretcher as she screamed for her father.

“Forget the dust. I’ll wash your face and give you water. Come on, sweetheart,” one rescuer said.

Bruised and battered but alive, Ghazl Qassem was among the lucky survivors of the attack earlier this week. Four days later, rescue workers were still digging Friday through the rubble of the apartment building after pulling out the bodies of 20 people, including nine children, most from Ghazl’s family. They were searching for at least three others believed inside.

At least 96 children are among the 320 people killed in Aleppo since a cease-fire collapsed on Sept. 19, according to UNICEF, as Syrian and Russian warplanes barrage the city’s eastern opposition neighborhoods, trying to crush more than five years of resistance there. Almost a third of the 840 people wounded over the same period are children, according to the World Health Organization.

“Aleppo is one of the most dangerous places in the world, and in the last week it has become perhaps the most dangerous place in the world for children.” Juliette Touma, regional chief of communications for the U.N children’s agency told The Associated Press.

Nearly 300,000 people — including 100,000 children — are trapped in Aleppo’s rebel-held eastern districts, a pocket of resistance some eight miles long and three miles wide that civil defense workers say has been hit by 1,900 bombs in the past week. The campaign has wreaked destruction on hospitals, clinics, residential buildings, water stations and electric generators.

Parents desperately struggling to keep their families safe fear the threat of an imminent ground offensive. They hold little hope for the future, with no regular schooling and little access to nutritious food. Images of wounded and screaming children, covered in dust or being pulled out of rubble, have become a daily reality in Aleppo.

“We are totally resigned to God’s will,” said Khaled Sakka, a father of 10 children, all under the age of 14. He, his three wives and the children all sleep in one room in the middle of the house, the only safety measure they have against the nightly airstrikes.

“The bombs are bringing down five-story buildings. They are even reaching bunkers,” he said.

Wounded children are often left untreated, sometimes to die, in Aleppo’s overwhelmed hospitals. Only 30 doctors remain in opposition-held neighborhoods: One physician for every 10,000 people, compared to a peacetime standard of one for every 1,000, Touma said.

“It is very difficult to know how many (children) are traumatized, but one would imagine every single one is impacted by the horrors, especially with the intensification of the violence in the past week,” she said.

So-called bunker-busting bombs, designed to target underground structures, have been widely used, possibly to crush tunnels or bunkers used as refuge by the thousands of rebel fighters defending the districts.

But the powerful bombs also threaten the underground shelters where civilians take refuge and where children go to school. For the past several years, most classes have been held in basements because of the constant fighting and threat of airstrikes.

“The use of bunker-busting bombs means there is literally nowhere we can keep children safe, ” said Nick Finney of Save the Children, which runs 12 schools in eastern Aleppo, eight of them held underground. “We’re now more likely to see children being pulled from the rubble or treated on the floor of a hospital than sitting at a school desk.”

When schools opened across the country this month, they remained closed in eastern Aleppo because of the danger, said Brita Haj, the head of the local council in the rebel-held part of the city.

Medics say the death toll among children and other residents may be far higher than reported, since some families bury their dead without taking them to hospitals or morgues, and many victims remain buried in the rubble.

Dr. Hatem, a pediatrician, said women and children make up a large percentage of the victims because they are the ones who stay at home. As one of two pediatricians in besieged Aleppo, Hatem said he had an enormous load even before the last week’s intensification of fighting, treating 80 to 120 children a day.

Now he’s seeing a spike in wounded children in intensive care, from four or five a month to four or five a day. There is also a rise in aggressive behavior among children and various signs of trauma such as bed-wetting or losing the ability to walk or talk, said Hatem, who gave only his last name out of security fears.

Ghazl Qassem was at home with her four siblings, her pregnant mother, cousins and grandmother when the bomb struck Tuesday around midday. Their apartment building is adjacent to a hospital in a neighborhood with a number of specialized clinics; hospitals and clinics have been frequent targets in the recent campaign.

The children’s father, Hussein, was not home at the time.

Since Tuesday’s attack he has not moved from the rubble as the bodies of his family members have been pulled out one after the other, including his wife and three other children, said a neighbor, Tamim Selim.

Ghazl is staying with an aunt. “She is having nightmares. She is still in shock. She sleeps and wakes up, reaches for her mother’s phone and watches photos there and cries,” Selim said.

Abdul-Majid Malah, a father of three who lives nearby, rushed to the scene after the bomb.

“I only saw the dust. When it settled, the building was all on the ground. It was like dominos,” he said.

His children, ages 2, 3 and 4, rush into his arms every time they hear a bomb, he said. Then a minute later, they go back to playing.

There is no adequate underground shelter in his building for Malah, his pregnant wife and children to take refuge.

“We can only pray that the bombs don’t hit us at home,” he said, adding that he stays up all night tracking where the missiles are hitting. “I won’t be able to change fate, but I am too stressed out to fall asleep.”

The park next to their house was bombed last month, so the children have not been allowed to venture outside. On Friday, incendiary bombs hit outside their building, but no one was hurt.

“We only survive on hope,” he said.</s>Damascus, Syria (CNN) Two hospitals in eastern Aleppo have been bombed "out of service," staff and activists said, as airstrikes continued to pound rebel-held parts of the northern Syrian city on Wednesday.

Hospital staff said the city's M2 and M10 hospitals were hit early Wednesday, putting intensive care units out of use.

Dr. Mounir Hakimi of the International Union of Medical Care and Relief Organizations and UK-based charity Syrian Relief told CNN that an airstrike hit the M10 hospital and shelling the M2.

"Anyone offering help to civilians now is being targeted," he said. "It's the message that any humanitarian response is not welcome."

At least six people were killed Wednesday morning when an airstrike struck a bakery as people lined up to buy bread, according to activists. They said the death toll was expected to rise.

Ground battles also raged Wednesday in Aleppo between the Syrian army and rebels.

The Syrian army said it took control of the central Farafra neighborhood in Aleppo's old city Tuesday, bringing it closer to the rebel-held eastern areas.

However, rebels and activists inside the besieged city told CNN there had been no ground assault in those areas.

There are conflicting reports of how many people were killed Tuesday in airstrikes on eastern Aleppo.

The rebel-held Aleppo Health Directorate reported 18 deaths, including six children. The activist group Aleppo Media Center said more than 30 people were killed, but it was unclear if some of those deaths were a result of earlier strikes or bodies pulled out of the rubble.

The UN children's agency, UNICEF, said Wednesday that at least 96 children had been killed and 223 injured in eastern Aleppo since Friday.

Hundreds of airstrikes have rocked the beleaguered city, home to more than 250,000 people, since the Syrian government, backed by Russia, announced a renewed, "comprehensive" offensive on Thursday.

The strikes on two of Aleppo's remaining hospitals likely will only compound the misery of civilians trapped there.

Hakimi, a UK-based orthopedic surgeon, told CNN that due to damage to the electricity and oxygen generators and the intensive care unit at M10, "the hospital as we speak is out of service. It's one of the main hospitals in Aleppo, so it's a big blow."

There were no casualties in the strike on M10, Hakimi said, but three patients were killed and two members of staff were injured at the M2 hospital. Five artillery shells struck that facility, he said, citing information from medical and humanitarian workers on the ground.

"The problem now is that there's no intensive care units in either hospital," Hakimi said. "They were already running at double capacity because during the weekend there was the most intensive airstrikes ever."

The remaining hospitals are already running at full capacity, he said. There may be more instances in which doctors perform surgery on patients as they lie on the ground due to lack of space, he said.

"We are so close to humanitarian catastrophe in Aleppo," Hakimi said.

The Syria Civil Defense group, a volunteer emergency medical service also known as the White Helmets, was also hit in Aleppo on the weekend, he said.

UNICEF said the 30 doctors who remain in Aleppo face an increasing number of trauma cases with hardly any medical equipment or medicine to treat the injured.

The agency cited a doctor on the ground as saying that children with low chances of survival are often left to die because of a lack of capacity or supplies.

"The children of Aleppo are trapped in a living nightmare," said UNICEF Deputy Executive Director Justin Forsyth. "There are no words left to describe the suffering they are experiencing."

On Wednesday, Pope Francis again appealed for peace in Syria and warned that those responsible for the bombing campaign in Aleppo will be "accountable to God" for their actions, according to Vatican Radio.

"In expressing my deep sorrow and lively concern for what is happening in that already battered city -- where children, the elderly, the sick, young and old, all are dying -- I renew my appeal to everyone to commit themselves with all their strength to the protection of civilians as an imperative and urgent obligation," Francis said, speaking at his general audience in Rome.

More than 200 airstrikes hit Aleppo over the weekend, killing more than 100 people and injuring hundreds more, according to Ammar al-Selmo of the Syria Civil Defense group.</s>A video from besieged eastern Aleppo has shown the moment a young girl, trapped beneath rubble following a deadly bomb attack, is rescued by the Syria Civil Defence, better known as the white helmets.

The footage shows the emergency workers breaking through a wall with a drill to access part of the five floor building blown to smithereens by pro-Assad bombs. At first nothing can be seen of the young girl, identified as Ghazal Qasim, covered in dust and trapped under huge pieces of rubble.

As White Helmets start removing the pieces of debris from around Ghazal she can be heard screaming violently. Her reaction when she is removed on an orange stretcher and touched on the leg would seem to imply it was broken.

As she is torn from the rubble, the pink tracksuit she was wearing at the time of the bombing can just be seen through the thick dust. With her eyes closed and her mouth slightly open Ghazal only moves to scream when she is knocked.

In images which have been uncomfortably familiar, as Ghazal is brought into the light of the outside world like Omran Daqneesh whose pictures shocked the world, she is as grey as the bombed-out buildings that surround her.

Activists have claimed in unconfirmed media reports that Ghazal was the sole survivor of the wreckage. The video of her rescue from the building lasts just under five minutes but the white helmets have said they were digging for four hours to rescue her.

A local activist alleged that bunker buster bombs were used in the attack to destroy buildings in Aleppo's al-Shaar neighbourhood on Tuesday 27 September.

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The video emerges as the international community and human rights groups condemn unprecedented violence in eastern Aleppo where the Syrian government and its Russian and Iranian backers appear to be pursuing an end game. In the aftermath of a seven-day-long ceasefire across Syria the Assad regime vowed that it would retake all territory lost over the course of the country's six-year civil war.

The UN's children's charity UNICEF has called the effect of the war in Aleppo on children as the worst seen since the conflict began. At least 96 children have been killed and 223 have been injured in Eastern Aleppo since Friday, UNICEF said.

"The children of Aleppo are trapped in a living nightmare," said UNICEF Deputy Executive Director Justin Forsyth said in a statement. "There are no words left to describe the suffering they are experiencing."

The health system in Eastern Aleppo is crumbling with some 30 doctors left, hardly any equipment or emergency medicine to treat the injured, and an ever-increasing number of trauma cases.</s>BEIRUT — The 6-year-old girl was found trapped under the rubble of her home, destroyed by an airstrike in Syria’s rebel-held city of Aleppo. “Dust!” she wailed as rescue workers pried away the stones and debris on top of her, finally freeing her and placing her on a stretcher as she screamed for her father.

“Forget the dust. I’ll wash your face and give you water. Come on, sweetheart,” one rescuer said.

Bruised and battered but alive, Ghazl Qassem was among the lucky survivors of the attack earlier this week. Four days later, rescue workers were still digging Friday through the rubble of the apartment building after pulling out the bodies of 20 people, including nine children, most from Ghazl’s family. They were searching for at least three others believed inside.

At least 96 children are among the 320 people killed in Aleppo since a cease-fire collapsed on Sept. 19, according to UNICEF, as Syrian and Russian warplanes barrage the city’s eastern opposition neighborhoods, trying to crush more than five years of resistance there. Almost a third of the 840 people wounded over the same period are children, according to the World Health Organization.

“Aleppo is one of the most dangerous places in the world, and in the last week it has become perhaps the most dangerous place in the world for children.” Juliette Touma, regional chief of communications for the U.N children’s agency told The Associated Press.

Nearly 300,000 people — including 100,000 children — are trapped in Aleppo’s rebel-held eastern districts, a pocket of resistance some eight miles long and three miles wide that civil defense workers say has been hit by 1,900 bombs in the past week. The campaign has wreaked destruction on hospitals, clinics, residential buildings, water stations and electric generators.

Parents desperately struggling to keep their families safe fear the threat of an imminent ground offensive. They hold little hope for the future, with no regular schooling and little access to nutritious food. Images of wounded and screaming children, covered in dust or being pulled out of rubble, have become a daily reality in Aleppo.

“We are totally resigned to God’s will,” said Khaled Sakka, a father of 10 children, all under the age of 14. He, his three wives and the children all sleep in one room in the middle of the house, the only safety measure they have against the nightly airstrikes.

“The bombs are bringing down five-story buildings. They are even reaching bunkers,” he said.

Wounded children are often left untreated, sometimes to die, in Aleppo’s overwhelmed hospitals. Only 30 doctors remain in opposition-held neighborhoods: One physician for every 10,000 people, compared to a peacetime standard of one for every 1,000, Touma said.

“It is very difficult to know how many (children) are traumatized, but one would imagine every single one is impacted by the horrors, especially with the intensification of the violence in the past week,” she said.

So-called bunker-busting bombs, designed to target underground structures, have been widely used, possibly to crush tunnels or bunkers used as refuge by the thousands of rebel fighters defending the districts.

But the powerful bombs also threaten the underground shelters where civilians take refuge and where children go to school. For the past several years, most classes have been held in basements because of the constant fighting and threat of airstrikes.

“The use of bunker-busting bombs means there is literally nowhere we can keep children safe, ” said Nick Finney of Save the Children, which runs 13 schools in eastern Aleppo, eight of them held underground. “We’re now more likely to see children being pulled from the rubble or treated on the floor of a hospital than sitting at a school desk.”

When schools opened across the country this month, they remained closed in eastern Aleppo because of the danger, said Brita Haj, the head of the local council in the rebel-held part of the city.

Medics say the death toll among children and other residents may be far higher than reported, since some families bury their dead without taking them to hospitals or morgues, and many victims remain buried in the rubble.

Dr. Hatem, a pediatrician, said women and children make up a large percentage of the victims because they are the ones who stay at home. As one of two pediatricians in besieged Aleppo, Hatem said he had an enormous load even before the last week’s intensification of fighting, treating 80 to 120 children a day.

Now he’s seeing a spike in wounded children in intensive care, from four or five a month to four or five a day. There is also a rise in aggressive behavior among children and various signs of trauma such as bed-wetting or losing the ability to walk or talk, said Hatem, who gave only his last name out of security fears.

Ghazl Qassem was at home with her four siblings, her pregnant mother, cousins and grandmother when the bomb struck Tuesday around midday. Their apartment building is adjacent to a hospital in a neighborhood with a number of specialized clinics; hospitals and clinics have been frequent targets in the recent campaign.

The children’s father, Hussein, was not home at the time.

Since Tuesday’s attack he has not moved from the rubble as the bodies of his family members have been pulled out one after the other, including his wife and three other children, said a neighbor, Tamim Selim.

Ghazl is staying with an aunt. “She is having nightmares. She is still in shock. She sleeps and wakes up, reaches for her mother’s phone and watches photos there and cries,” Selim said.

Abdul-Majid Malah, a father of three who lives nearby, rushed to the scene after the bomb.

“I only saw the dust. When it settled, the building was all on the ground. It was like dominos,” he said.

His children, ages 2, 3 and 4, rush into his arms every time they hear a bomb, he said. Then a minute later, they go back to playing.

There is no adequate underground shelter in his building for Malah, his pregnant wife and children to take refuge.

“We can only pray that the bombs don’t hit us at home,” he said, adding that he stays up all night tracking where the missiles are hitting. “I won’t be able to change fate, but I am too stressed out to fall asleep.”

The park next to their house was bombed last month, so the children have not been allowed to venture outside. On Friday, incendiary bombs hit outside their building, but no one was hurt.

“We only survive on hope,” he said.</s>BEIRUT — The 6-year-old girl was found trapped under the rubble of her home, destroyed by an airstrike in Syria’s rebel-held city of Aleppo. “Dust!” she wailed as rescue workers pried away the stones and debris on top of her, finally freeing her and placing her on a stretcher as she screamed for her father.

“Forget the dust. I’ll wash your face and give you water. Come on, sweetheart,” one rescuer said.

Bruised and battered but alive, Ghazl Qassem was among the lucky survivors of the attack earlier this week. Four days later, rescue workers were still digging Friday through the rubble of the apartment building after pulling out the bodies of 20 people, including nine children, most from Ghazl’s family. They were searching for at least three others believed inside.

At least 96 children are among the 320 people killed in Aleppo since a cease-fire collapsed on Sept. 19, according to UNICEF, as Syrian and Russian warplanes barrage the city’s eastern opposition neighborhoods, trying to crush more than five years of resistance there. Almost a third of the 840 people wounded over the same period are children, according to the World Health Organization.

“Aleppo is one of the most dangerous places in the world, and in the last week it has become perhaps the most dangerous place in the world for children.” Juliette Touma, regional chief of communications for the U.N children’s agency told The Associated Press.

Nearly 300,000 people — including 100,000 children — are trapped in Aleppo’s rebel-held eastern districts, a pocket of resistance some eight miles long and three miles wide that civil defense workers say has been hit by 1,900 bombs in the past week. The campaign has wreaked destruction on hospitals, clinics, residential buildings, water stations and electric generators.

Parents desperately struggling to keep their families safe fear the threat of an imminent ground offensive. They hold little hope for the future, with no regular schooling and little access to nutritious food. Images of wounded and screaming children, covered in dust or being pulled out of rubble, have become a daily reality in Aleppo.

“We are totally resigned to God’s will,” said Khaled Sakka, a father of 10 children, all under the age of 14. He, his three wives and the children all sleep in one room in the middle of the house, the only safety measure they have against the nightly airstrikes.

“The bombs are bringing down five-story buildings. They are even reaching bunkers,” he said.

Wounded children are often left untreated, sometimes to die, in Aleppo’s overwhelmed hospitals. Only 30 doctors remain in opposition-held neighborhoods: One physician for every 10,000 people, compared to a peacetime standard of one for every 1,000, Touma said.

“It is very difficult to know how many (children) are traumatized, but one would imagine every single one is impacted by the horrors, especially with the intensification of the violence in the past week,” she said.

So-called bunker-busting bombs, designed to target underground structures, have been widely used, possibly to crush tunnels or bunkers used as refuge by the thousands of rebel fighters defending the districts.

But the powerful bombs also threaten the underground shelters where civilians take refuge and where children go to school. For the past several years, most classes have been held in basements because of the constant fighting and threat of airstrikes.

“The use of bunker-busting bombs means there is literally nowhere we can keep children safe, “ said Nick Finney of Save the Children, which runs 13 schools in eastern Aleppo, eight of them held underground. “We’re now more likely to see children being pulled from the rubble or treated on the floor of a hospital than sitting at a school desk.”

When schools opened across the country this month, they remained closed in eastern Aleppo because of the danger, said Brita Haj, the head of the local council in the rebel-held part of the city.

Medics say the death toll among children and other residents may be far higher than reported, since some families bury their dead without taking them to hospitals or morgues, and many victims remain buried in the rubble.

Dr. Hatem, a pediatrician, said women and children make up a large percentage of the victims because they are the ones who stay at home. As one of two pediatricians in besieged Aleppo, Hatem said he had an enormous load even before the last week’s intensification of fighting, treating 80 to 120 children a day.

Now he’s seeing a spike in wounded children in intensive care, from four or five a month to four or five a day. There is also a rise in aggressive behavior among children and various signs of trauma such as bed-wetting or losing the ability to walk or talk, said Hatem, who gave only his last name out of security fears.

Ghazl Qassem was at home with her four siblings, her pregnant mother, cousins and grandmother when the bomb struck Tuesday around midday. Their apartment building is adjacent to a hospital in a neighborhood with a number of specialized clinics; hospitals and clinics have been frequent targets in the recent campaign.

The children’s father, Hussein, was not home at the time.

Since Tuesday’s attack he has not moved from the rubble as the bodies of his family members have been pulled out one after the other, including his wife and three other children, said a neighbor, Tamim Selim.

Ghazl is staying with an aunt. “She is having nightmares. She is still in shock. She sleeps and wakes up, reaches for her mother’s phone and watches photos there and cries,” Selim said.

Abdul-Majid Malah, a father of three who lives nearby, rushed to the scene after the bomb.

“I only saw the dust. When it settled, the building was all on the ground. It was like dominos,” he said.

His children, ages 2, 3 and 4, rush into his arms every time they hear a bomb, he said. Then a minute later, they go back to playing.

There is no adequate underground shelter in his building for Malah, his pregnant wife and children to take refuge.

“We can only pray that the bombs don’t hit us at home,” he said, adding that he stays up all night tracking where the missiles are hitting. “I won’t be able to change fate, but I am too stressed out to fall asleep.”

The park next to their house was bombed last month, so the children have not been allowed to venture outside. On Friday, incendiary bombs hit outside their building, but no one was hurt.

“We only survive on hope,” he said.</s>BEIRUT — The 6-year-old girl was found trapped under the rubble of her home, destroyed by an airstrike in Syria’s rebel-held city of Aleppo. “Dust!” she wailed as rescue workers pried away the stones and debris on top of her, finally freeing her and placing her on a stretcher as she screamed for her father.

“Forget the dust. I’ll wash your face and give you water. Come on, sweetheart,” one rescuer said.

Bruised and battered but alive, Ghazl Qassem was among the lucky survivors of the attack earlier this week. Four days later, rescue workers were still digging Friday through the rubble of the apartment building after pulling out the bodies of 20 people, including nine children, most from Ghazl’s family. They were searching for at least three others believed inside.

At least 96 children are among the 320 people killed in Aleppo since a cease-fire collapsed on Sept. 19, according to UNICEF, as Syrian and Russian warplanes barrage the city’s eastern opposition neighborhoods, trying to crush more than five years of resistance there. Almost a third of the 840 people wounded over the same period are children, according to the World Health Organization.

“Aleppo is one of the most dangerous places in the world, and in the last week it has become perhaps the most dangerous place in the world for children.” Juliette Touma, regional chief of communications for the U.N children’s agency told The Associated Press.

Nearly 300,000 people — including 100,000 children — are trapped in Aleppo’s rebel-held eastern districts, a pocket of resistance some eight miles long and three miles wide that civil defense workers say has been hit by 1,900 bombs in the past week. The campaign has wreaked destruction on hospitals, clinics, residential buildings, water stations and electric generators.

Parents desperately struggling to keep their families safe fear the threat of an imminent ground offensive. They hold little hope for the future, with no regular schooling and little access to nutritious food. Images of wounded and screaming children, covered in dust or being pulled out of rubble, have become a daily reality in Aleppo.

“We are totally resigned to God’s will,” said Khaled Sakka, a father of 10 children, all under the age of 14. He, his three wives and the children all sleep in one room in the middle of the house, the only safety measure they have against the nightly airstrikes.

“The bombs are bringing down five-story buildings. They are even reaching bunkers,” he said.

Wounded children are often left untreated, sometimes to die, in Aleppo’s overwhelmed hospitals. Only 30 doctors remain in opposition-held neighborhoods: One physician for every 10,000 people, compared to a peacetime standard of one for every 1,000, Touma said.

“It is very difficult to know how many (children) are traumatized, but one would imagine every single one is impacted by the horrors, especially with the intensification of the violence in the past week,” she said.

So-called bunker-busting bombs, designed to target underground structures, have been widely used, possibly to crush tunnels or bunkers used as refuge by the thousands of rebel fighters defending the districts.

But the powerful bombs also threaten the underground shelters where civilians take refuge and where children go to school. For the past several years, most classes have been held in basements because of the constant fighting and threat of airstrikes.

“The use of bunker-busting bombs means there is literally nowhere we can keep children safe, “ said Nick Finney of Save the Children, which runs 12 schools in eastern Aleppo, eight of them held underground. “We’re now more likely to see children being pulled from the rubble or treated on the floor of a hospital than sitting at a school desk.”

When schools opened across the country this month, they remained closed in eastern Aleppo because of the danger, said Brita Haj, the head of the local council in the rebel-held part of the city.

Medics say the death toll among children and other residents may be far higher than reported, since some families bury their dead without taking them to hospitals or morgues, and many victims remain buried in the rubble.

Dr. Hatem, a pediatrician, said women and children make up a large percentage of the victims because they are the ones who stay at home. As one of two pediatricians in besieged Aleppo, Hatem said he had an enormous load even before the last week’s intensification of fighting, treating 80 to 120 children a day.

Now he’s seeing a spike in wounded children in intensive care, from four or five a month to four or five a day. There is also a rise in aggressive behavior among children and various signs of trauma such as bed-wetting or losing the ability to walk or talk, said Hatem, who gave only his last name out of security fears.

Ghazl Qassem was at home with her four siblings, her pregnant mother, cousins and grandmother when the bomb struck Tuesday around midday. Their apartment building is adjacent to a hospital in a neighborhood with a number of specialized clinics; hospitals and clinics have been frequent targets in the recent campaign.

The children’s father, Hussein, was not home at the time.

Since Tuesday’s attack he has not moved from the rubble as the bodies of his family members have been pulled out one after the other, including his wife and three other children, said a neighbor, Tamim Selim.

Ghazl is staying with an aunt. “She is having nightmares. She is still in shock. She sleeps and wakes up, reaches for her mother’s phone and watches photos there and cries,” Selim said.

Abdul-Majid Malah, a father of three who lives nearby, rushed to the scene after the bomb.

“I only saw the dust. When it settled, the building was all on the ground. It was like dominos,” he said.

His children, ages 2, 3 and 4, rush into his arms every time they hear a bomb, he said. Then a minute later, they go back to playing.

There is no adequate underground shelter in his building for Malah, his pregnant wife and children to take refuge.

“We can only pray that the bombs don’t hit us at home,” he said, adding that he stays up all night tracking where the missiles are hitting. “I won’t be able to change fate, but I am too stressed out to fall asleep.”

The park next to their house was bombed last month, so the children have not been allowed to venture outside. On Friday, incendiary bombs hit outside their building, but no one was hurt.

“We only survive on hope,” he said.</s>Damascus, Syria (CNN) The United States is making preparations to suspend bilateral talks with Russia on Syria -- unless Moscow takes immediate steps to end the assault on Aleppo and restore a ceasefire, the US State Department said Wednesday.

US Secretary of State John Kerry said in a telephone call to his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, that the United States and its partners held Russia responsible for a drastic escalation in attacks that have put civilians at great risk.

Two hospitals in eastern Aleppo have been bombed "out of service," staff and activists said, as airstrikes pounded rebel-held parts of the northern Syrian city on Wednesday.

Hospital staff said the city's M2 and M10 hospitals were hit early Wednesday, putting intensive care units out of use.

Dr. Mounir Hakimi of the International Union of Medical Care and Relief Organizations and UK-based charity Syrian Relief told CNN that an airstrike hit the M10 hospital and shelling the M2.

"Anyone offering help to civilians now is being targeted," he said. "It's the message that any humanitarian response is not welcome."

At least six people were killed Wednesday morning when an airstrike struck a bakery as people lined up to buy bread, according to activists. They said the death toll was expected to rise.

Ground battles also raged Wednesday in Aleppo between the Syrian army and rebels.

The Syrian army said it took control of the central Farafra neighborhood in Aleppo's old city Tuesday, bringing it closer to the rebel-held eastern areas.

However, rebels and activists inside the besieged city told CNN there had been no ground assault in those areas.

There are conflicting reports of how many people were killed Tuesday in airstrikes on eastern Aleppo.

The rebel-held Aleppo Health Directorate reported 18 deaths, including six children. The activist group Aleppo Media Center said more than 30 people were killed, but it was unclear if some of those deaths were a result of earlier strikes or bodies pulled out of the rubble.

The UN children's agency, UNICEF, said Wednesday that at least 96 children had been killed and 223 injured in eastern Aleppo since Friday.

Hundreds of airstrikes have rocked the beleaguered city, home to more than 250,000 people, since the Syrian government, backed by Russia, announced a renewed, "comprehensive" offensive on Thursday.

The strikes on two of Aleppo's remaining hospitals likely will only compound the misery of civilians trapped there.

Hakimi, a UK-based orthopedic surgeon, told CNN that due to damage to the electricity and oxygen generators and the intensive care unit at M10, "the hospital as we speak is out of service. It's one of the main hospitals in Aleppo, so it's a big blow."

There were no casualties in the strike on M10, Hakimi said, but three patients were killed and two members of staff were injured at the M2 hospital. Five artillery shells struck that facility, he said, citing information from medical and humanitarian workers on the ground.

"The problem now is that there's no intensive care units in either hospital," Hakimi said. "They were already running at double capacity because during the weekend there was the most intensive airstrikes ever."

The remaining hospitals are already running at full capacity, he said. There may be more instances in which doctors perform surgery on patients as they lie on the ground due to lack of space, he said.

"We are so close to humanitarian catastrophe in Aleppo," Hakimi said.

The Syria Civil Defense group, a volunteer emergency medical service also known as the White Helmets, was also hit in Aleppo on the weekend, he said.

UNICEF said the 30 doctors who remain in Aleppo face an increasing number of trauma cases with hardly any medical equipment or medicine to treat the injured.

The agency cited a doctor on the ground as saying that children with low chances of survival are often left to die because of a lack of capacity or supplies.

"The children of Aleppo are trapped in a living nightmare," said UNICEF Deputy Executive Director Justin Forsyth. "There are no words left to describe the suffering they are experiencing."

On Wednesday, Pope Francis again appealed for peace in Syria and warned that those responsible for the bombing campaign in Aleppo will be "accountable to God" for their actions, according to Vatican Radio.

"In expressing my deep sorrow and lively concern for what is happening in that already battered city -- where children, the elderly, the sick, young and old, all are dying -- I renew my appeal to everyone to commit themselves with all their strength to the protection of civilians as an imperative and urgent obligation," Francis said, speaking at his general audience in Rome.

More than 200 airstrikes hit Aleppo over the weekend, killing more than 100 people and injuring hundreds more, according to Ammar al-Selmo of the Syria Civil Defense group.</s>Syrian civilians and a rescue worker evacuate children in the Maadi district of eastern Aleppo after regime aircrafts reportedly dropped explosive-packed barrel bombs on August 27, 2016. At least 15 civilians were reported killed when two bombs fell several minutes apart, near a tent where people were receiving condolences for those killed this week. / AFP PHOTO / AMEER ALHALBI

In the besieged parts of the city, children face dire food and medicine shortages, besides air strikes

They cannot play, sleep or attend school. Increasingly, they cannot eat. Injury or illness could be fatal. Many just huddle with their parents in windowless underground shelters — which offer no protection from the powerful bombs that have turned east Aleppo into a kill zone.

Among the roughly 250,000 people trapped in the insurgent redoubt of the divided northern Syrian city are 100,000 children, the most vulnerable victims of intensified bombings by Syrian forces and their Russian allies.

The routine in east Aleppo, where shellshocked children are exhumed from rubble and left writhing in bloody clothes on dirty hospital gurneys, is a confluence of Syria’s young population, failed diplomacy and the reality of a war that appears to be worsening after more than five years.

“They’re trapped, and they have no way of escaping,” said Alun McDonald, a spokesman for the Middle East operations of Save the Children, the international charity. “That’s one reason we’re seeing such big numbers of child casualties.”

The people living in besieged rebel-held areas of Aleppo have shown a high level of resilience, moving schools and hospitals underground for protection. So too, life has continued on the government-held western side of the city, where, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, 49 children were killed by rebel mortar fire in July alone.

But lately on the eastern side, Mr. McDonald said, “the bombing has become so intense that even underground shelters aren’t safe any more.” Save the Children has said that at several hospitals and ambulance centres it supports in eastern Aleppo, half of the casualties have been children since the bombings escalated after the collapse of a short-lived cease-fire last week.

Hanaa Singer, the UNICEF representative in Syria, said precise numbers of child casualties in east Aleppo had yet to be determined. Nonetheless, she said by telephone from Damascus, “it’s definitely the worst we have seen for children.” Just a few weeks ago, Ms. Singer said, UNICEF planned to publicise how east Aleppo children were enrolled to go back to school, with photos of students walking to class past piles of rubble. That plan was scrapped. “Children are not going to school now,” she said.

Children in the besieged parts of Aleppo also face dire food and medicine shortages. Surgery and blood transfusions required for treating bomb wounds are, by many accounts, practically impossible now. Medical workers have left children to die on hospital floors for lack of supplies. The New York Times News Service
The UN's children's charity UNICEF has called the effect of the war in Aleppo on children as the worst seen since the conflict began, and says at least 96 children have been killed and 223 have been injured in Eastern Aleppo September 23.