UN official urges pause to fighting in Aleppo

Agency hopes to send relief to some 300,000 residents trapped in rebel-held areas

BEIRUT— A senior UN humanitarian official on Thursday urged for an immediate pause to the fighting around Syria’s contested city of Aleppo as government forces pounded opposition areas with airstrikes and rebels kept up their attempts to break a government siege.

In Geneva, Jan Egeland, adviser to UN’s special envoy to Syria, said the world body was ready to send relief to the city divided between government-controlled and oppositioncontrolled areas once the fighting pauses. The last delivery to reach those trapped in rebel-held parts of Aleppo — where the UN estimates some 300,000 residents remain — was in June, he said.

Russia had declared it is offering humanitarian corridors for residents in the area, but rights groups said such passages are not neutral and don’t offer guarantees to civilians wishing to use them.

Meanwhile, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported at least 40 airstrikes on opposition areas of Aleppo and nearby towns, including an attack on a camp for internally displaced Syrians in Atareb, a town to the southwest.

The Aleppo Media Centre, another activist group, said at least two people were killed in the Atareb attack. The Syrian Civil Defence group said a followup attack on the camp wounded two of its volunteers, including one seriously. Anti-government activists and a doctor said a missile fell 15 metres from a hospital, seriously wounding a boy.