Syria regime kills dozens in raids, agrees aid convoys
ALEPPO, Syria: Syria’s regime killed dozens of civilians with air strikes in and around Aleppo city on Friday, even as it agreed to allow access for ground convoys to deliver aid to 12 besieged areas.
The raids on Aleppo were the most intense in more than a month, with dozens of barrel bombs -- crude, unguided explosive devices -- dropped on rebel-held eastern districts of the city, an AFP correspondent said.
Fourteen people were killed when a bus they were travelling in was hit on the Castello road, a key rebel supply route out of Aleppo, the civil defence said.
At least 43 other civilians were killed in regime strikes on neighbourhoods in the city’s rebel-held east, said the civil defence, known as the White Helmets.
“There are people under the rubble and we’re still looking for the missing,” said a volunteer who gave his name as Khaled.
AFP footage showed a building in the city’s east whose front had been blown off and bulldozers clearing debris from the roads.
A man wearing medical gloves stood in a room surrounded by white body bags, one with blood seeping through.
Official news agency SANA said rebel rocket fire killed two children in the regime-controlled west of the city.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the Castello road was now “effectively cut”.
“All movement is targeted, be that buses or bystanders,” its head Rami Abdel Rahman said.
The observatory later said that regime air strikes killed at least 15 civilians in the Boleel area controlled by Islamic State outside Deir Ezzor city in eastern Syria.
It added that rebel shelling on Friday killed 10 civilians, including a woman and two children in Aleppo’s regimecontrolled western districts.
Nearly 600,000 people are estimated to live under siege in Syria, most of them encircled by forces of President Bashar alAssad’s regime, whose approval the UN says is needed to deliver aid by air.
Last month the UN said that if it did not see an improvement on aid access to besieged areas by June 1, it would task its food agency to carry out drops.
Syria on Friday agreed to partial aid deliveries to Moadamiyeh, Daraya and Douma, which are besieged by regime forces, the UN office of humanitarian affairs said.
Some diplomats however dismissed the move, saying such approvals had been granted in the past and failed to materialise on the ground.
The UN will on Sunday present a formal request to the Syrian
There are people under the rubble and we’re still looking for the missing. — Volunteer who gave his name as Khaled
government to approve airdrops where land access has been denied, diplomats at a closed UN Security Council meeting said.
Officials have stressed the challenges and risks of aid operations in the skies above a country at war.
UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said helicopters would have to be used to transport aid to 15 of 19 besieged areas that include densely populated towns. — AFP