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Russian Federation announced a major offensive in opposition-held areas on Tuesday, and Syrian President Bashar Assad’s air force has been pounding Aleppo city.
By Wednesday, helicopters had dropped dozens of barrel bombs on buildings, including a children’s hospital and a blood-donation bank.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says Tuesday’s airstrikes struck three neighborhoods.
The World Health Organization (WHO) condemned recent attacks on three other hospitals in a rural area west of Aleppo city and two in Idlib province in which at least two people were reportedly killed and 19 people wounded.
Tuesday’s bombing on eastern Aleppo appeared to mark the end of a pause inside the city declared by Russian Federation on October 18.
The bombardment of east Aleppo ended a period of relative quiet for more than 250,000 people living in the besieged rebel-held side of the city.
East Aleppo has not received any aid since government forces cut off the rebel supply lines in July.
The Al-Shaar neighborhood appeared to be the worst hit, with barrel bombs striking the Children’s Hospital, Al-Bayan Hospital and the Central Blood Bank, staff on site with the Syrian American Medical Association (SAMS) told CNN.
“There is not a military solution that we can impose on the awful civil war inside of Syria”, he said, condemning Moscow as being “determined to prop up the Assad regime” and willing to “engage in some disgusting tactics to try to make that a reality”.
In the run-up to last week’s presidential election, Trump said he was ready to work with Assad to fight against the Islamic State group in Syria.
Damascus considers all those who oppose Assad’s government to be “terrorists” like the Islamic State jihadist group, which Trump has said should be the focus of U.S. involvement in Syria.
Once Syria’s economic powerhouse, Aleppo has been roughly divided into a regime-controlled west and a rebel-held east since 2012.
Meanwhile, 25 fighters and civilians were killed in a car-bomb attack targeting Syrian rebels in the northern province of Aleppo on Thursday, a rebel group said.
Footage has shown children being pulled alive from rubble and treated at a medical centre after a second day of bombing in rebel-held eastern Aleppo, which a war monitor, medics and emergency workers say has killed at least 32 people. It said fighter jets from the carrier and an air base in Syria also took part in the strikes. The civil war started at the height of the Arab Spring and has pit the government of President Bashar al-Assad, who is supported by Russia, Iran, and Hezbollah, the Shia militia group from Lebanon, against rebel groups that range in ideology from leftist to Islamist.
But that could change under the next administration, with Assad telling Portugal’s RTP state television Tuesday he welcomed Trump’s campaign comments suggesting Washington’s involvement in Syria should be focused exclusively on fighting militants.
“Civil defense teams and paramedics are having trouble reaching targeted areas due to the intensity of the attacks”, he said.
An insurgent alliance known as the Army of Conquest, which includes the al-Qaida-linked Fatah al-Sham Front, has led the attack on western Aleppo.
The Observatory said districts struck included al-Shaar, al-Sukkari, al-Sakhour and Karam al-Beik. Since then, more than a quarter of a million people have been killed and more than 10 million displaced across the war-torn country, according to United Nations figures.
This week, Assad effectively targeted hospitals that saw around 23,000 people each month, and performed about 1,800 surgeries, UOSSM said.