DOZENS KILLED IN ALEPPO ATTACKS
• A wave of airstrikes and shelling killed more than 60 people in less than 24 hours in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo, monitors and activists said Thursday. The contested city is now one of the main battlegrounds of Syria’s devastating civil war, with a ceasefire that has collapsed and peace talks in Geneva stalled.
At least 27 people died as a hospital supported by Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) and the International Committee for the Red Cross and nearby buildings were hit overnight in the rebel-held part of Aleppo.
The UN envoy for Syria appealed early Thursday on the United States and Russia to help revive the peace talks and a ceasefire, which he said “hangs by a thread.”
However, the violence only escalated. New airstrikes Thursday in residential areas in the rebel-held part of the city killed at least 20 while state media reported that at least 1,000 mortars and rockets were fired at government-held areas of Aleppo, killing at least 14 civilians.
The chief Syrian opposition negotiator Mohammed Alloush blamed the government of President Bashar Assad for the violence. He told The Associated Press that it shows “the environment is not conducive to any political action.” He denounced the intensive bombing as an attempt by Assad’s government to drive the residents of Aleppo out, labelling it “a crime of ethnic and sectarian cleansing.”
About 200 civilians have been killed in the past week in Syria, nearly half of them around Aleppo. There has also been shelling in Damascus, along with a car bombing — both rarities for the capital. The ICRC said the fighting is putting millions at grave risk.
With peace talks in Geneva deadlocked, Syrians are regarding the escalating bloodshed with dread, fearing that Aleppo is likely to be the focus of the next, more vicious, phase of the war.