Russian military plane crash kills 39

BEIRUT— A Russian military cargo plane crashed near an air base in Syria on Tuesday, killing all 39 Russian servicemen on board in a blow to Russian operations in Syria. The Russian military quickly insisted the plane was not shot down and blamed the crash on a technical error.

Meanwhile, shelling near the rebel-held eastern suburbs of Damascus killed dozens of people over the past 24 hours as President Bashar Assad’s government, supported by the Russian military, pushed its assault onthe capital’s rebel-held suburbs. International aid workers on ar are humanitarian mission inside the besieged area described dramatic scenes of rescuers trying topull corpses fromthe rubble of buildings and children who hadn’ t seen daylight in 15 days.

The mission Monday to the area known as eastern G ho uta was cut short after the government shelling escalated while the aid workers were still inside, calling into question future aid shipments to the encircled region, the last major opposition stronghold near the capital.

Opposition activists and a war monitor said 80 people were killed Monday— the deadliest day since the U.N. Security Council demanded a 30-day ceasefifire for Syria — and at least nine were killed Tuesday.

“People were telling us very desperate stories. They are tired, they are angry. They don’t want aid, what they want is the shelling to stop,” Pawel Krzysiek, head of communications for the Syrian branch of the International Committee of the Red Cross, said Tuesday.