Death of diplomacy draws closer in Syria
THE US warned yesterday that it was on the brink of ending talks with Russia over the assault on Aleppo, where the United Nations says a humanitarian catastrophe is unfolding unlike any witnessed so far in Syria’s brutal five-year war.
Air strikes pounded Aleppo province while at least 11 civilians, including seven children, died during attacks on the city of Idlib, nearby Jarjanaz and central Hama province, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
With no let-up in the military campaign, US Secretary of State John Kerry admitted months of diplomacy to end the war had hit a dead-end.
“I think we are on the verge of suspending the discussion because, you know, it’s irrational in the context of the kind of bombing taking place, to be sitting there, trying to take things seriously,” he told a conference in the US capital.
US President Barack Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel condemned what they called “barbarous” Russian and Syrian regime air strikes on Aleppo.
The Syrian government and its ally Russia “bear special responsibility for ending the fighting in Syria”, the two leaders agreed.
But Russia said it would press ahead with the air war in support of the regime, warning that Washington’s refusal to work with Moscow on a settlement would be a “gift to terrorists”.
Russia and the US have traded blame for last week’s collapse of a ceasefire deal that would have marked the first step in a new effort to end the war that has killed 300,000 people since 2011.
International alarm is growing over the crisis in rebel-held eastern Aleppo, where the Syrian army launched an offensive a week ago to retake the city.
UN aid chief Stephen O’Brien told the Security Council that Aleppo was descending into a “merciless abyss of a humanitarian catastrophe unlike any we have witnessed so far in Syria”. More than 100,000 children remain trapped in east Aleppo, which had come under intense bombing since the Syrian army offensive began, he said.