16000 flee Aleppo homes after ‘chilling’ Assad onslaught

“The intensity of attacks on eastern Aleppo neighbourhoods over the past few days has forced thousands of civilians to flee to other parts of the city”, O’Brien said.

Its residents kept life going amid ferocious fighting with the pro-government western districts, but four years of battles and airstrikes have reduced entire blocks in the territory to rubble.

The civil defence rescue service that operates in eastern Aleppo said on Monday it had almost run out fuel to power the equipment it has been using to pull people from the rubble of bombed-out buildings. Images published by the Civil Defense showed bodies strewn on a debris-filled road in an attack they It blamed on government forces. Other troops are still pushing in from the south.

Numerous fleeing civilians headed to government and Kurdish-controlled areas while others were driven deeper into the remaining rebel-held areas.

The official said it is not clear how long the Aleppo offensive would last, describing collapsing moral and opposition defenses in a campaign he said mobilized a large segment of army troops to eradicate what he called “terrorists”.

Aleppo is largely divided between government-controlled areas in the west and rebel positions in the east. Assad has vowed to retake the whole city, once Syria’s commercial heart and now one of the last urban strongholds still in rebel hands.

US officials stressed that they haven’t given up, pointing to the negotiations with Russian Federation and several other countries directly or indirectly involved in Syria’s war as evidence of continued diplomatic engagement.

Among the proposals being discussed behind the scenes is the possibility that diplomats from a range of countries could accompany a humanitarian convoy into Aleppo.

“The most important thing is that over 80,000 Syrians, including tens of thousands of children, have been freed”.

The Syrian Red Crescent has not yet been able to provide a number for those who fled, but spokeswoman Muna Kurdi told ABC News that “many children and women came; they were given blankets and hot meals and medical teams are going around the evacuation center to provide medicine to those who need it”.

At least 4,000 people have fled from the rebel-held eastern districts to the government-controlled western side of the city and have been registered with the Syrian Arab Red Crescent in Jibreen, a neighborhood there, Jens Laerke, the spokesman for the United Nations office for humanitarian affairs, said Monday. It said that families had been transported to makeshift housing.

Russian Federation says more than 80,000 civilians are now able to access humanitarian aid in eastern Aleppo.

There are also hundreds of thousands of civilians trapped inside eastern Aleppo. Hospitals have been bombed beyond use.

Rebels have held eastern Aleppo since 2012, but have been losing ground since Russian Federation began helping President Bashar al-Assad in September a year ago.

Bana, the seven-year-old child who just last week was rejoicing at receiving ebooks of the Harry Potter series from JK Rowling’s publisher, tweeted on 29 November an image of what is left of her house after it was destroyed by an airstrike. “Fatemah”, one tweet read.

Syria’s conflict has killed more than 300,000 people and drawn in world powers including a US-led air coalition fighting the Islamic State group.