Aleppo Battle: Shellfire Kills Civilians In Rebel-Held East

Thick cloud cover and rain deterred air strikes on rebel-held districts of east Aleppo on Thursday, though artillery bombardment and heavy fighting continued on the ground, a monitor and civil defence workers said.

Syrian state media announced midday Wednesday that its forces had retaken the southern Sheikh Saeed neighborhood, while the Observatory said rebels still held onto a third of the area.

Government shelling killed 21 civilians, including two children, in an eastern district of Aleppo yesterday, the Observatory said.

The U.N. humanitarian aid agency estimates that 31,500 people have been displaced in rebel-held parts of Aleppo, Syria, over the last week, saying some have reportedly been killed or detained trying to enter government-held areas.

Aleppo city council president Brita Hagi Hasan said that 250,000 civilians in Aleppo face the threat of death.

Aleppo has been the epicentre of the civil war that began in Syria in 2011 after the regime’s crackdown on pro-democracy protests around the country.

Civilians have poured out of the rebel-held east in recent days, with parents carrying children and the young pushing the old in wheelchairs or makeshift carts as they flee. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reports about 50,000 civilians displaced in the fighting.

“The parties to the conflict have shown time and again they are willing to take any action to secure military advantage even if it means killing, maiming or starving civilians into submission in the process”, Mr. O’Brien warned, calling the siege of the city a “deeply alarming and chilling situation”.

Rebels have also fired rockets into western Aleppo, killing almost 50 people since the latest assault began, according to the monitor.

Eight others were reportedly killed by rockets that hit government-held areas. Fifty-three people were killed on Tuesday, and another 45 had died by Wednesday afternoon, the Aleppo Media Center activist group said.

O’Brien added that there was no longer a functioning hospital, and the rebel-held area has been under siege for almost 150 days.

The Syrian regime is backed by Russian airstrikes and Shiite militias from both Iran and Iraq. They were also believed to be newly displaced from the government onslaught on the northern parts of eastern Aleppo.

The meeting was called by Britain and France’s United Nations ambassadors about two weeks after Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime announced it would resume airstrikes targeting besieged, rebel-held eastern Aleppo after a three-week pause.

“I know some of the families and they told me that they are now in their homes and afraid to move around because Syrian government soldiers are everywhere”, Fadi said, according to the organization.