adminRebel-held areas of Aleppo have been hit by a new wave of intense aerial bombardment, according to opposition activists, as Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said the capture of the northern city would be a “springboard” to pushing “terrorists” back to Turkey.
The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said yesterday that dozens of overnight air strikes had struck east Aleppo, as fighting continued on the northern and southern edges of the city.
According to The Aleppo Media Centre, a group of opposition activists in the city, the overnight air strikes killed and wounded a number of people, with some buried under the debris.
Since the Syrian army’s assault against rebel-held Aleppo began in late September, Russian and government bombardment has killed more than 370 people, including 68 children, according to an Observatory toll.
Over the past three days, as many as 100 people have been killed in the raids, rescue workers said, as the air strikes and shelling of the city’s east intensified.
The rising casualties in Aleppo have prompted an international outcry and a renewed diplomatic push, with talks between the United States and Russia planned for today.
Aleppo, a constant battlefield in the long-running Syrian civil war, has been divided between opposition control in the east and government control in the west since 2012.
In an interview with a Russian newspaper published yesterday, Assad said taking back the city, once the country’s industrial hub, would provide important political and strategic gains for his government.
“You have to keep cleaning this area and to push the terrorists to Turkey, to go back to where they come from or to kill them. There’s no other option,” Assad told Komsomolskaya Pravda. “Aleppo is going to be a very important springboard to do this move.”
Assad also told the newspaper that the Syrian civil war had become a conflict between Russia and the West. “What we’ve been seeing recently during the last few weeks, and maybe few months, is something like more than Cold War,” he said.
Assad also said that the actions of Turkey, which is backing Syrian rebels involved in an operation aimed at clearing Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) from its Syria border region, constituted an “invasion” and said that they violated “international law”.
As world powers prepared for new truce talks at the weekend, Russia announced it was ready to give rebels safe passage out of the eastern sector of Aleppo, where more than 275 000 people are under siege. — AP
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