Beirut: Regime aircraft pounded rebel areas of Syria’s second city Aleppo, which was left out of a deal to “freeze” fighting from Saturday despite international outrage over renewed violence.
Shelling and air raids in Aleppo over the past week have killed more than 250 civilians and pushed a landmark February 27 ceasefire to the verge of collapse.
The fresh violence comes as the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) warned that the intensification of fighting brings millions of people closer to a humanitarian disaster.
The ICRC statement issued late on Friday said four medical facilities on both sides of the city were hit earlier that day, including a dialysis centre and a cardiac hospital. ICRC appealed to all parties in the conflict “for an immediate halt in the attacks.”
“There can be no justification for these appalling acts of violence deliberately targeting hospitals and clinics, which are strictly prohibited under international humanitarian law,” said Marianne Gasser, head of the ICRC in Syria. “People keep dying in these attacks. There is no safe place anymore in Aleppo.”
“For the sake of people in Aleppo, we call for all to stop this indiscriminate violence,” Gasser said.
UAE condemns violence in Syria
Meanwhile, the UAE has expressed its deep concern at the upsurge in attacks on civilians in Syria, especially in the city of Aleppo.
It described as "immoral' the targeting by the government forces of hospitals and essential medical services meant for the population languishing under siege and facing extremely difficult inhumane conditions.
Bombs smash into neighbourhoods
On Friday, crude barrel bombs smashed into residential neighbourhoods as rescue workers scrambled to cope with the casualties.
Near the eastern rebel-held Fardos district, the civil defence, known as the White Helmets, pulled bloodied bodies caked in dust from a building that had been hit.
An AFP correspondent saw a distraught man cradling his wounded daughter, who appeared to be about 10 years old, in an ambulance.
“My daughter! Oh God, my daughter, please someone get in and drive!” he screamed.
After a rescue worker jumped into the driver’s seat, the young girl whimpered: “I’m going to die ... I’m going to die.”
Some onlookers helped rescue workers remove rubble as others stared at the sky waiting for the next strike.
Bombardment of the city killed 17 people in rebel-held districts and 13 people in the government-controlled western neighbourhoods, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
“The earth is shaking beneath our feet,” one resident of the densely populated Bustan Al Qasr area said.
An air raid also hit a local clinic in rebel-held Al Maja neighbourhood, wounding several people, including a nurse, the White Helmets said.
Syrian opposition activists said Saturday’s air strikes on Aleppo killed four people and wounded many others, mostly in the neighbourhood of Bab Al Nairab.
The Observatory and the Local Coordination Committees reported more than 20 separate air raids on rebel-held parts of the city where an estimated 250,000 people remain.
Last week the Syrian regime declared it would conduct an all-out assault on Aleppo to kick out rebels once and for all. Analysts say the move serves to weaken the Syrian opposition’s bargaining power at ongoing peace talks in Geneva.
Aleppo was excluded from a brief truce declared by the Syrian army on Friday. The truce went into effect after midnight in the capital Damascus and its suburbs as well as the coastal province of Latakia. Activists said both areas included in the truce were relatively calm on Saturday. A Syrian security source said the deal was brokered by the US and Russia, but that Moscow had refused a request by Washington to include Aleppo.
US Secretary of State John Kerry called his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov to discuss “keeping and reinforcing” the broader ceasefire, Russia’s foreign ministry said.
“We want to focus on strengthening the cessation of hostilities, renewing it, reaffirming it, so that we can quell the fighting or the violations,” State Department spokesman Mark Toner told reporters.
The High Negotiations Committee — Syria’s main opposition body — condemned the growing violence in Aleppo in a letter to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.
The HNC walked out of UN-backed peace talks in Geneva earlier this month in frustration at the increasing bloodshed.
“It’s not an appropriate time to talk about a political process in the wake of the horrific massacres and the systematic violations of the truce, which has no real presence on the ground,” tweeted HNC head Riad Hijab.
UN rights chief Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussain on Friday slammed world powers backing opposing sides in Syria, saying the renewed violence showed a “monstrous disregard for civilian lives”.
In Damascus, ICRC spokesman Pawel Krzysiek said that despite the difficult situation in Aleppo that affects humanitarian operations in the city, the work elsewhere continued.
Two humanitarian convoys are on the way to two separate areas besieged by rebels and government forces respectively, he said.
The convoys, a joint operation between the ICRC, United Nations and the Syrian Arab Red Crescent, will deliver aid to Madaya and Zabadani — two mountain resorts near Damascus that have been besieged by government forces.
Krzysiek added that 20 other trucks are on their way to the northwestern villages of Fua and Kfarya, which are being besieged by insurgents.
The ICRC delivers food parcels and wheat flour, medicines, bed nets, crutches and anti-lice shampoo to all locations, he said.
Also Saturday, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs posted on its Twitter account that the aid delivery in the four areas will be large enough to serve 61,000 people.
UAE condemns inhumane violence in Syria
Meanwhile, the UAE has expressed its deep concern at the upsurge in attacks on civilians in Syria, especially in the city of Aleppo.
It described as "immoral' the targeting by the government forces of hospitals and essential medical services meant for the population languishing under siege and facing extremely difficult inhumane conditions.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation expressed its fear in a statement, saying, "Unwarranted escalation against the civilian population could undermine the political process and the ceasefire, which contributed positively to the reduction of violence suffered by the Syrian people."
The UAE called on all the warring parties in Syria, especially the Syrian government, "to sincerely and honestly work for the success of the political process and to de-escalate the violence against civilians, and facilitate the delivery of emergency relief aid to the areas under siege."
It also urged the UN Security Council to shoulder its responsibilities, especially in the implementation of Resolution number 2254 and the need to spare the lives of Syrian civilians who are being subjected to fierce attacks as a result of the continued fighting and the determination to resolve matters militarily.
The UAE also called on the UN Security Council to urge the Syrian government to abide by the ceasefire and facilitate the entry of humanitarian aid to the besieged areas.
It reiterated its full faith in the political solution to the crisis in Syria through international terms of reference and stressed the need to comply with this framework, away from escalation and violence.
