Syrian Rescue Worker Says 3 Die in Suspected Chlorine Attack

Russian Federation said the raids destroyed a “chemical weapons factory” on Raqqa’s outskirts as well as a weapons storage facility and ISIL training camp to the north and southeast. A senior United Nations humanitarian official already has said that a 48-hour pause each week is needed in view of the logistics of providing aid.

“A unilaterally declared three-hour cease-fire per day isn’t enough to avoid a humanitarian catastrophe”, he said. Zaher al Saket, a Syrian brigadier general and defector, has investigated over 90 chlorine-based attacks from the Syrian regime, he told NPR. Russian Federation has been carrying out airstrikes to bolster Syrian government forces since last September.

“The Russian delegation confirmed their willingness to sit down with us (on Thursday and Friday) to try to agree on a workable humanitarian pause for us to go the Aleppo road way to help the poor people of east as well as in the west”, he said. The first-responders team of Syrian Civil Defense said it pulled 10 people alive from under the rubble.

Russian officials said long-range bombers hit Islamic State targets (IS) in the group’s de facto capital of Raqqa, as fierce fighting continued in the besieged city of Aleppo.

The offer came one day after crucial talks between President Vladimir Putin and Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan aimed at ending a crisis in ties.

But it made no mention of the “humanitarian windows” announced by Russian Federation. “We said we have a common enemy which we can struggle against together”, Cavusoglu said, using an Arabic-language acronym for ISIS. Syrian state television reported on Thursday that the army had advanced on Wednesday night under cover of air strikes to positions near the areas that opposition groups captured last week.

A Syrian military official denied the allegations, saying militants had fabricated the news.

In September 2013, after hundreds of people died in alleged sarin gas attacks on Ghouta, outside Damascus, Syria acceded to the Chemical Weapons Convention and President al-Assad pledged to destroy the country’s stockpile of prohibited chemical agents. It did not mention chlorine, but the Observatory said two people were killed in the strike and others suffered breathing difficulties. Western powers say the government has been responsible for chlorine and other chemical attacks.

But rebels and regime forces clashed in southern Aleppo yesterday, including during the period when the pause was meant to take hold, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

However, residents of the opposition-held eastern part of the city reported near-constant fighter jet overflights on Thursday.

“I’m at home and I don’t dare to leave – the jets are not letting up”, Wissam Zarqa told the AP.

Hospital workers react after a barrel bomb struck just outside the Omar bin Abdaziz hospital in the Maadi district of the northern Syrian city of Aleppo following government air raids on rebel-held districts of the city on July 16.