Reuters
Beirut, Sept 22: Warplanes mounted the heaviest air strikes in months against rebel-held districts of the city of Aleppo overnight, as Russia and the Syrian government spurned a US plea to halt flights, burying any hope for the revival of a doomed ceasefire. Rebel officials and rescue workers said incendiary bombs were among the weapons that rained from the sky on the city. Hamza al-Khatib, the director of a hospital in the rebel-held east, said the toll was 45.
“It’s as if the planes are trying to compensate for all the days they didn’t drop bombs” during the ceasefire, Ammar al-Selmo, the head of the civil defence rescue service in opposition-held eastern Aleppo said. “It was like there was coordination between the planes and the artillery shelling, because the shells were hitting the same locations that the planes hit,” he said.
The assault, by aircraft from the Syrian government, its Russian allies or both, made clear that Moscow and Damascus had rejected a plea by US Secretary of State John Kerry to halt flights so that aid could be delivered and a ceasefire salvaged.
In a tense televised exchange with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov at the United Nations Wednesday, Kerry said stopping the bombardment was the last chance to find a way “out of the carnage”.
President Bashar al-Assad meanwhile indicated he saw no quick end to the war, saying it would “drag on” as long as it is part of a global conflict in which terrorists were backed by Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, and the United States. Moscow and Washington announced the ceasefire two weeks ago with great fanfare. But the agreement, probably the final bid for a breakthrough on Syria before President Barack Obama leaves office next year, appears to have suffered the same ill fate as all previous peace efforts in a war that has killed hundreds of thousands of Syrians and made half the nation homeless.
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