West has failed in its humanitarian duty once again as people of Aleppo suffer

Is there any limit to human callousness and brutality? Judging by the scenes we have been witnessing in Aleppo, it would appear not.

Women, children, the sick, the old – they’re all seen as legitimate targets by the Iranian-backed militias and forces loyal to Assad, who defied the ceasefire agreement brokered by Russia and Turkey. There is no guarantee the new ceasefire deal will be honoured.

Doctors were sending urgent distress calls to the world, begging for help, as others sent farewell messages on social media as they prepared to die.

This has been happening right now, in 2016, as we sip our coffee and read the latest reports of the carnage in our daily newspapers. Members of the Syria civil defence, the “White Helmets”, were trying desperately to obtain a safe passage for all civilians, and were rapidly giving up hope. They made desperate appeals to the international community for help. That’s us.

When the Jews in Germany and Eastern Europe were being rounded up and carted off to death camps, the international community did nothing. After the war, vows were made that atrocities like these would never be allowed to happen again. Since then, the world has witnessed a series of humanitarian disasters, and every time we repeat the mantra “Never again”.

Easy words to say in the immediate aftermath, but evidently much harder to translate into action, as the suffering people of Aleppo will testify.

The least we can do as individuals is donate to the many charities who are there, on the ground, working hard to help the victims of what the UN has called a “complete meltdown of humanity’”

CAROLYN TAYLOR Wellbank, Broughty Ferry

For all the hand-wringing, Aleppo pales in comparison with the fall of Berlin to the Russians or our phosphor bombing of the refugee-packed hospital city of Dresden in the last weeks of the Second World War.

And our finger-pointing at President Assad and his allies must not deflect attention from our feckless interference in Syria’s internal affairs which opened the way to Daesh’s barbarians.

It was to avoid the kind of mess we created in the Middle East that the UN specifically banned intervention in “matters which are essentially within the jurisdiction of any state”.

Yet we have supported the US in undermining Saddam, Gadhafi, Mubarak, Assad and every secular ruler in the Levant who stood between the civilised world and religious extremism. REV DR JOHN CAMERON

Howard Place, St Andrews

It’s a nonsense to accuse the West of failure to act in Syria. Right from the start of the war we diplomatically sided with the insurgents.

In quick order we trained socalled “moderate” insurgents and supplied them with “nonlethal” equipment. When it became obvious that Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey were aiding Islamic State, we turned a blind eye.

Assad’s secular regime did not pose a threat to the West, yet we sought its overthrow. Our surreptitious involvement helped prolong Syria’s agony. Some achievement.

Yemen is different. Britain alongside the US and France openly aids and abets the Saudi onslaught. There is, alas, no prospect of an emergency Commons debate on Britain’s role in Yemen.

YUGO KOVACH Winterborne Houghton, Dorset