BEIRUT/ALEPPO: Intensive bombings pummeled Syria’s rebel-held eastern neighborhoods of the city of Aleppo on Friday, residents and rescuers said, hitting an area housing several hospitals and sending the chief of a pediatrics clinic in a frantic search for a place to move his young patients.
Syrian rebels fought fiercely with pro-government forces as they tried to advance into opposition-held areas and warplanes kept up their bombardment of the area.
The UN humanitarian adviser said on Friday the besieged population of eastern Aleppo faced a “very bleak moment” with no food or medical supplies, winter approaching, and an increasingly fierce attack by Syrian and allied forces.
Airstrikes on a village in the rural Aleppo province killed seven members of the same family, including four children, opposition activists said.
Streets were deserted and residents took refuge indoors as the government unleashed a fourth straight day of bombardment on opposition-controlled parts of Aleppo, Syria’s second city.
The artillery fire was the most intense in east Aleppo in around two years, according to AFP’s correspondent there, while rescue workers said it was too dangerous to move around bomb-scarred neighborhoods.
“I have never heard such intense artillery bombardments,” said Najib Fakhoury, head of the White Helmets volunteer rescue group in the rebel-held Ansari district.
“Earlier, we received a call for help to extinguish a fire,” he said. “But we cannot go because the shells are falling on the streets.”
Nowhere is safe
Mohamad Abboush, an east Aleppo resident, told Reuters an air strike killed two of his relatives, a 45-year-old uncle and a 12-year-old cousin, on Friday morning. As they sought out medical care for other relatives wounded in the attack, he said they found one hospital in ruins and another in flames.
The air strike had completely destroyed a four-story apartment block where his relatives had been living in the Tariq Al-Bab neighborhood, he said. The survivors had been taken to houses in another area, but nowhere was safe.
“The whole of Aleppo is being bombed,” he said.
While the government side has unleashed enormous firepower, its advances into rebel-held areas of Aleppo since September have been limited. The rebel forces are deeply entrenched and say they are well prepared for urban war.
Fighting was reported on the southern and eastern periphery of the rebel-held area on Friday. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based group that reports on the war, said Friday’s clashes were the fiercest this week.
The bombardment came as government troops pressed an assault on the southern neighborhood of Sheikh Said, which they briefly entered before being pushed back by rebel fighters, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. The rebels riposted by firing more than a dozen rockets into government-held areas of the city, the Britain-based monitoring group added.
At least 65 civilians have been killed since the offensive resumed on Tuesday, according to the Observatory, which relies on a network of sources inside Syria for its information.
The bombardment ended a period of relative respite, particularly in east Aleppo, where Moscow halted air strikes on Oct. 18 ahead of a series of brief cease-fires.
The cease-fires were intended to encourage residents and surrendering rebels to leave the east, but few did so, fearing moving into government-held territory.
Once the country’s main commercial and industrial hub, Aleppo has been devastated by fighting since the rebels overran the east of the city in 2012.
The rebels have been besieged by the army since July and aid agencies say food stocks in the sector are virtually exhausted.
The 1.2 million civilians living in government-held areas have come under repeated rocket fire by the rebels that has killed dozens.
Russia, which intervened in Syria in September 2015 in support of Assad’s regime, said on Wednesday that it had not carried out any raids on Aleppo since Oct. 18.
Instead it has concentrated its strikes in the northern province of Idlib, controlled by an alliance of rebels and militants.
Russian and Syrian aircraft continued to bomb several cities and towns in Idlib on Friday, according to the AFP correspondent in the province.
Regime artillery fire also hit the besieged rebel-held town of Douma, east of Damascus.
In New York, meanwhile, the UN Security Council on Thursday unanimously decided to extend for another year the mandate of a panel tasked with investigating chemical attacks in Syria and identifying those responsible.
Backed by Russia, the council adopted a US-drafted resolution to prolong the joint investigation by the United Nations and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) until November 2017.
So far, more than 100 people have been killed across northern Syria since Tuesday.
A physician who identified himself as Dr. Hatem, the head of the only pediatric hospital remaining in besieged rebel-held part of Aleppo, said his facility has been targeted once more on Friday, causing damages to its exterior. The hospital was also hit during a wave of airstrikes on the complex housing four hospitals on Wednesday.
Violence also escalated in and around Damascus, where government forces fiercely bombarded the city’s rebel-held eastern outskirts and rebels fired rockets into the government-controlled city center, witnesses said.
Major prize for Assad
Syrian government forces and allied militia renewed a heavy bombardment of rebel-held eastern Aleppo on Tuesday after a pause of several weeks. Russia, whose air force is bombing in support of Assad, says it has not taken part in the latest Aleppo attack. Moscow has, however, escalated its role in the war, launching attacks on other rebel-held areas from the sea.
The government, backed by the Russian air force and Shiite militias, has this year steadily closed in on eastern Aleppo, first besieging a population estimated by the United Nations to number 270,000 and then launching a major assault in September.
Sources on both sides said pro-government militias were mobilized in large numbers.
An official in the Levant Front rebel group, which fights under the Free Syrian Army banner, told Reuters that the pro-government forces appeared to be seeking to advance along a highway that bisects the rebel-held part of Aleppo.
His group lost a commander along with a number of his men in the fighting, he said. “The militias are coming in strongly in the areas they are trying to storm. There are few frontlines in Syria in general at the moment, most of the focus of the regime and militias is in Aleppo,” he said.
A source on the government side confirmed large mobilization by pro-Assad forces. The source said the shelling of recent days was in preparation for ground operations. A media unit run by Hezbollah, a Lebanese Shiite group fighting in support of Assad, said the army had made progress in northeastern Aleppo.
Rebels repelled an attempt by pro-government militias to advance in the Sheikh Saeed area on the southern periphery of eastern Aleppo after heavy bombardment including barrel bombs, Al-Farouk Abu Bakr, a commander in the Ahrar Al-Sham group, told Reuters. Syrian military officials could not immediately be reached for comment.
In the four days since bombardment resumed on eastern Aleppo, the Observatory says it has documented 65 deaths and hundreds of injuries in east Aleppo, and four deaths and dozens of injuries in government-held west Aleppo as a result of rebel rocket fire.
Aleppo has been the main battleground in the war this year. Capturing eastern Aleppo would be a major prize for Assad.
Hundreds of people have been killed in the east Aleppo assault since September, according to UN figures and rescue workers. Rebel shelling, meanwhile, killed dozens of people in government-held western Aleppo during a failed counter attack.
State media said shelling killed two more people in western Aleppo on Friday.
