US takes aim at Russian ‘barbarism’
The United States accused Russia of ‘‘barbarism’’ and war crimes in Syria yesterday as Moscow’s airstrikes over Aleppo pushed a humanitarian crisis there to new depths.
The nations sparred verbally at an emergency UN Security Council meeting called to demand that Russia rein in its ally, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, and halt the blistering attacks on Syria’s second city.
‘‘Instead of pursuing peace, Russia and Assad make war,’’ said Samantha Power, the US ambassador to the United Nations. ‘‘What Russia is sponsoring and doing is not counterterrorism. It is barbarism.’’
A September 9 cease-fire deal guaranteed by the United States and Russia was smashed a week ago by Russian and Syrian airstrikes on a UN aid convoy. Despite frantic diplomacy to get that truce back on track, yesterday’s Security Council meeting suggested that divisions between the two sides were deepening.
‘‘Instead of helping get lifesaving aid to civilians, Russia and Assad are bombing the humanitarian convoys, hospitals and first responders who are trying desperately to keep people alive,’’ Power said.
But Russia’s representative, Vitaly Churkin, instead blamed his American counterparts for the return to fighting and insisted that Assad’s forces had shown ‘‘admirable restraint’’.
‘‘I just need to explain what working with our American colleagues is like,’’ he said, telling the 15-member council that Washington had failed to rein in violence by the rebel forces it backs in Syria.
‘‘Bringing a peace is almost an impossible task now,’’ he said.
As the war of words unfolded in New York, Aleppo’s rebel-held eastern neighbourhoods were being shaken by the most ferocious aerial attacks there in recent memory. A provisional death toll provided by local nongovernmental organisations suggested that at least 85 people had been killed there since early Saturday.
‘‘This is the worst day,’’ said Abdulkafi al-Hamdo, an English teacher living close to the city’s front line. ‘‘The people here are psychologically broken.’’
The latest attacks have appeared to target what resources the eastern neighbourhoods have left. Branches of at least three rescue teams have been hit by airstrikes, and firetrucks and ambulances have been damaged or destroyed.
Hamdo said yesterday that some rescue teams no longer had enough ambulances to reach families suffocating under the rubble of their homes.
For Assad, Aleppo represents an important prize that would expand government control in the north and deprive opposition groups of one of their last strongholds.
Home to an estimated 275,000 people, east Aleppo’s rebel-held neighbourhoods have been under near-continuous siege since government troops encircled the area in mid-July.
Residents say fuel and medical supplies are low, forcing doctors to turn off oxygen machines and operate by the light of their cellphones. ‘‘We’ve never seen anything this bad,’’ Maher Saqqur, a Syrian neurosurgeon, said yesterday, speaking from a Canadian clinic where he consults with Aleppo doctors via Skype.
‘‘The doctors can do nothing but triage on the floor, and still the bodies keep coming. They don’t even have time to take a sip of water. We’re seeing massacres every hour,’’ he said.
Hundreds of civilians have been killed in east Aleppo over the past week.