Aleppo residents see no sign of attacks easing
Russia said the Syrian army was suspending combat operations in Aleppo yesterday to allow for the evacuation of civilians from besieged rebel- held neighbourhoods, but residents and fighters reported no let- up in the bombing and shelling campaign on the opposition’s evershrinking enclave.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, speaking in Germany after talks with US Secretary of State John Kerry, said military experts and diplomats would meet tomorrow in Geneva to work out details of the rebels’ exit from Aleppo’s eastern neighbourhoods, along with civilians who were willing to leave the city.
Lavrov said the Syrian army suspended combat action yesterday to allow some 8000 civilians to leave the city in a convoy spreading across a 5km route. However, opposition activists said there was no halt to the government offensive.
“Battles are intense,” said a message from a rebel operation room shared with the Associated Press.
Other residents reported war- planes firing from machine guns at rebel positions and artillery shells falling in the remaining rebel- controlled districts.
In Washington, State Department spokeswoman Elizabeth Trudeau said the United States was focused on deescalating the violence in Aleppo to allow aid into the city and enable people wishing to stay in their homes to do so.
She said Kerry and Lavrov continued talks yesterday with the goal of securing a ceasefire and the “safe departure of those who wish to leave the city”. She said details of the USRussian technical discussions in Geneva were still being worked out.
Earlier, in Geneva, United Nations special adviser Jan Egeland said efforts to evacuate hundreds of wounded people from eastern Aleppo had stalled following a deadly attack this week on a Russian military hospital that left two Russian nurses dead and a doctor seriously wounded.
“It i s with bitterness and frustration that we have to report that we have not been able even to evacuate the wounded,” Egeland said. “The member states that are supposed to help us get access to civilians in the crossfire are poles apart in how they regard what is happening in Syria.”
He said Syrian President Bashar alAssad’s Government had authorised UN- organised aid shipments into eastern Aleppo for the first time. However, he provided no details about how the aid might get in or where it would go, and past agreements have fallen through before any aid could be delivered.
Medical officials in the enclave i ssued a passionate plea for a ceasefire.
“Aleppo i s finished. There i s nothing left except a few residents and bricks,” Mohammed Abu Jaafar, the head of the eastern Aleppo forensic authority, said in a recorded message shared with reporters. “This may be my last call.”
Residents described streets littered with bodies as ambulances and rescue workers struggled to keep up.
The rebel defences have buckled amid the wide- ranging government offensive, which opened a number of fronts at once and was preceded by an intensive aerial campaign. More than three- quarters of the rebel sector has now fallen, including the symbolically important ancient Aleppo quarters. More than 30,000 of the estimated 275,000 residents of the besieged eastern enclave have fled to western Aleppo.
The Syrian Government has dismissed a proposal for a ceasefire put forward by the rebels on Thursday.
In comments published yesterday in the state- owned al- Watan newspaper, Assad said he would no longer consider truce offers, adding that such proposals, particularly by the Americans, often come when the rebels are in a “difficult spot”.
“That is why we hear wailing and screaming and pleas for truces as the only political discourse now,” Assad said.
He said that while a victory by Syrian government forces in the battle for Aleppo would be a “big gain”, it would not end the country’s civil war.
“Liberating Aleppo from the terrorists deals a blow to the whole foundation of this project,” he said. But he added, “to be realistic, it doesn’t mean the end of the war.”