Russia says Aleppo combat suspended; residents disagree
BEIRUT—Russia said the Syrian army was suspending combat operations in Aleppo late Thursday to allow for the evacuation of civilians from besieged rebel-held neighborhoods, but residents and fighters reported no let-up in the bombing and shelling campaign on the opposition’s ever-shrinking enclave.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, speaking in Germany after talks with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, said military experts and diplomats would meet Saturday in Geneva to work out details of the rebels’ exit from Aleppo’s eastern neighborhoods, along with civilians who were willing to leave the city.
Lavrov said the Syrian army suspended combat action late Thursday to allow some 8,000 civilians to leave the city in a convoy spreading across a five-kilometer (three-mile) 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 warplanes 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 U.S. was focused on de-escalating 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 on Thursday with the goal of securing a cease-fire and the “safe departure of those who wish to leave the city.” She said details of Saturday’s U.S.-Russian technical discussions in Geneva were still being worked out.
Earlier, in Geneva, U.N. 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 is 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 Assad’s government had authorized U.N.-organized 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 issued a passionate plea for a cease-fire.
“Aleppo is finished. There is 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.”
By early afternoon, Abu Jaafar said 14 bodies had arrived at his facility from all over eastern Aleppo, although a comprehensive death toll for the day was not possible because of the intense fighting. Residents described streets littered with bodies as ambulances and rescue workers struggled to keep up.