Syria’s Aleppo set ablaze ahead of fresh diplomatic bid
throughout the night to contain the blazes, which local activists at the Aleppo Media Centre said were caused by “incendiary phosphorous bombs”.
In footage posted by the group, a ball of flame shoots up over the city, lighting up the skyline and sparking fires on the horizon.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said strikes on the rebel-held neighbourhoods of Bustan al-Qasr and Al-Kalasseh “led to massive fires” overnight.
Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman said they were“the most intense strikes in months” on those two districts. He said raids by Russian warplanes yesterday killed 13 people, including three women, in the city.
“The non-stop strikes last night were so violent I can’t even describe them,” said Ibrahim Abu al-Leith, spokesman for the White Helmets, a prominent Syrian group of emergency responders. One volunteer was wounded in the strikes and ensuing fires, Abu al-Leith said.
The White Helmets yesterday won the Right Livelihood Award “for their outstanding bravery, compassion and humanitarian engagement”, announced the jury for the Swedish human rights award, known as the “alternative Nobel prize”.
Residents of east Aleppo’s have been living under government siege since early September.
Food aid promised for them under the US-Russia deal has been stalled at the border since last week and will go bad in just a few days.
“Forty trucks are sitting at the Turkish-Syrian border. The food will be expiring on Monday,” the head of the UN humanitarian taskforce for Syria, Jan Egeland, told reporters in Geneva. “The drivers are sleeping at the border and they have done so now for now a week, so please, President Assad, do your bit to enable us to get to eastern Aleppo and also the other besieged areas,” Egeland said in a direct appeal to Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad.
The UN resumed its aid deliveries yesterday after a brief pause in the wake of a strike on a humanitarian convoy in Syria’s north that killed 20 civilians and destroyed 18 aid trucks. Yesterday’s aid was going “to people in a besieged area of rural Damascus,” said UN humanitarian agency spokesman Jens Laerke.
Diplomatic efforts to end Syria’s war were set to continue in New York with a new meeting yesterday of the International Syria Support Group (ISSG), chaired by Moscow and Wash- ington. Sounding a cautious note before yesterday’s talks, Kerry said: “It’s going to be difficult. We’ll see what people are willing to do.”
During an address to the UN Security Council on Wednesday, Kerry demanded that Russia force Damascus to ground its warplanes after Monday’s deadly raid on the aid convoy.
Moscow denies that Russian or Syrian planes carried out the raid and instead said a coalition drone was in the area when the aid trucks were hit.
The US-Russia deal had called for an end to fighting between regime forces and non-jihadist rebels, excluding extremists like the Islamic State group, as well as increased aid deliveries.
It was meant to pave the way for a resumption of peace talks, which have repeatedly failed.
The UN’s deputy envoy for Syria said yesterday that he hoped talks could resume in the coming weeks, despite “grim” events on the ground.
On the ground, a “minister” in Syria’s opposition government was among at least 12 people killed in a car bomb attack in the southern province of Daraa yesterday, rebel officials said.
And in central Syria, 123 rebel fighters and their families were bussed out of the last opposit ion-held dist r ict of Homs city into northern parts of the province.