Russian military lashes out at UN over aid to Aleppo

He explained how local agencies were saying the situation was now so bad that Aleppo was experiencing “a descent into hell”.

The Prime Minister said the Government was “pressing hard” and “doing everything that we can” to end the suffering of the Syrian people.

He says though the two countries back opposing sides in Syria’s civil war, they agree Syria’s situation is urgent.

The Western governments and their media, Dean said, have buried all the reports that show the Syrian forces have helped civilians to escape from militant-held areas in Aleppo.

“Now, I renew in this connection our request to al-Nusra to leave eastern Aleppo on a save passage”.

Despite Russia’s humanitarian efforts, the chairman of the German Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee, Norbert Roettgen, and Green Party politician Franziska Brantner urged the Bundestag to impose a new round of sanctions against Moscow for its actions in Aleppo, Spiegel Online reported. “It is besieged, it is freezing… and there is active fighting on the ground”, said Al Jazeera’s Dekker.

Russian Federation proposes opening four humanitarian corridors to allow the wounded to leave east Aleppo and aid convoys to enter the city.

The U.N. has food for 150,000 people ready in western Aleppo but it still can not reach roughly 200,000 who remain in the enclave, where food stocks have run out and surgery is being done in basements without anaesthetic, de Mistura’s humanitarian adviser Jan Egeland said.

He said Russian Federation has pledged to respect the corridors, and that “we (the U.N.) now feel confident that the armed opposition groups will do the same”. No humanitarian assistance has been allowed in since July, despite several pauses in airstrikes. Al-Yousef said representatives of various rebel factions were in consultation with Turkish officials, who are in turn talking with the Russians.

Britain and France are also seeking a Security Council resolution aimed at ensuring that members of president Bashar Assad’s Syrian regime who are involved in using chemical weapons are punished.

“People trying to flee the [Jubb] al-Qubba area in eastern Aleppo were targeted by heavy regime shelling”, Abdel-Rahman Hassan of the White Helmets, which operates in rebel-held areas of Syria, said. For the West, the loss of Aleppo represents a humiliating defeat, testifying to years of inaction and policy confusion.

Artillery shells rained down on one southeastern rebel-held district.

The government’s offensive has left 42 children dead, among a total of more than 300 civilians killed since November 15.

Speaking to a special Security Council session by video-link from London, Stephen O’Brien, the United Nations under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs, appealed for action to stop the fighting.