Syria army retakes Aleppo district
Bombardment rages as the WHO warns of hospitals being destroyed and western powers accuse Russia of war crimes
DAMASCUS // Syria’s army took control of a rebel-held district in central Aleppo yesterday after days of heavy air strikes that have killed dozens and sparked allegations of war crimes.
In the first advance since announcing plans last week to retake all of the divided city, pro-government troops seized the Farafira district north-west of Aleppo’s historic citadel, a military source said.
“After neutralising many terrorists, units are now demining the area,” the source said.
The push followed several days of Syrian and Russian air strikes on rebel- held Aleppo neighbourhoods – some of the fiercest bombardments of the five-year conflict so far – after a ceasefire deal brokered by Moscow and Washington collapsed last week. The Aleppo maelstrom prompted western powers to accuse Russia of committing war crimes, charges the Kremlin condemned as unacceptable.
In the latest broadside, Nato secretary general Jens Stoltenberg also condemned the air campaign.
“The appalling attacks on Aleppo have shaken all of us,” Mr Stoltenberg said.
On the ground in eastern Aleppo, air strikes hit several neighbourhoods simultaneously, including in Al Shaar, where a five-storey building was brought down with a family stuck inside.
One young girl, her body encased in rubble, was among the dead. Her father, in shock as rescue workers picked up her lifeless body, collapsed beside, saying: “She’s just sleeping. She’s just used to sleeping.”
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said more than 155 people were killed by Russian and regime bombardments on Aleppo city since the government announced its offensive last week.
At least 11 civilians were killed yesterday in raids on the neighbourhoods of Al Shaar and Al Mashhad, according to the Britain-based group.
Residents have been left reeling from food shortages and skyrocketing prices.
The World Health Organisation warned yesterday that medical facilities in eastern Aleppo were on the verge of complete collapse.
“Over the last weekend, more than 200 people were injured and
One father saw his daughter’s lifeless body and said “she’s just sleeping, she’s just used to sleeping”
taken to understaffed health facilities in east Aleppo,” a spokeswoman said in Geneva.
The UN body called for “an immediate establishment of humanitarian routes to remove the sick and wounded”.
The observatory said that there were significantly fewer strikes on Aleppo yesterday than in recent days, but confirmed the advance by pro-government forces into Farafira.
Aleppo has been roughly divid- ed between government control in the west and rebel control in the east since mid-2012.
This month, a ceasefire went into effect across Syria, brokered after exhaustive talks between US secretary of state John Kerry and Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov.
It fell apart within a week, with each side blaming the other for the latest failure.
Analysts said yesterday that the unprecedented ferocity with which Aleppo has been hit in recent days suggested that Moscow was backing the Syrian government’s aim to totally recapture the city.
“Russia has decided to go all out because it no longer believes in the possibility of collaborating with the United States in Syria,” said Fabrice Balanche, a Syria expert at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
At an emergency session of the UN Security Council on Sunday, US ambassador Samantha Power accused Russia of barbarism. The British and French envoys went further, saying the bombing of Aleppo constituted war crimes. German chancellor Angela Merkel said yesterday that violence in Aleppo was on an absolutely unacceptable scale and that it was up to Russia and Syria to ensure humanitarian aid could reach the battered city.