Syria’s Famed ‘White Helmets’ Group Says It’s Being Targeted In New Offensive

Warplanes bombed Aleppo Friday leaving some 90 dead with what residents described as unprecedented ferocity after the Russian-backed Syrian army declared an offensive to fully capture Syria’s biggest city, killing off any hope of reviving a cease-fire.

Syrian government forces have also captured a Palestinian refugee camp just north of the city.

Footage of children being pulled, seemingly alive, from the rubble emerged at the weekend and the death toll was expected to rise.

In the rebel-held neighborhood of Bustan al-Qasr, cluster bombs killed 13 people and wounded 150, according to Ibrahim Alhaj, a member of the Syrian Civil Defense, volunteer first responders also known as the White Helmets. It has repeatedly changed hands between government forces and insurgents.

The unnamed military official was quoted by Syrian state media on Friday as saying that operations in rebel-held eastern parts of the city “will include a ground offensive”.

The fall of Handarat to Syrian troops allied with pro-government Palestinian fighters pushes insurgents further away from the government-controlled Castello Road, a main artery leading to rebel-held parts of the city.

Aleppo is “dying” after almost two million people were left without water and at least 115 were killed in ferocious bombing, the United Nations said last night.

The Turkey-based Syrian National Coalition, one of Syria’s main opposition groups, condemned the attacks on Aleppo, calling it “a insane crime led by the Assad regime and Russian occupation”.

Russian Federation supports the Syrian government, while the U.S. backs the opposition.

At least 30 strikes hit the rebel-held east of the city during the night and early on Friday, killing at least three people, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Aleppo was once Syria’s commercial and industrial hub but has been ravaged by fighting and roughly divided between government control in the west and rebel control in the east since mid-2012.

Living conditions in the already-battered eastern districts have meanwhile grown even worse.

“That pumping station pumps water to the entire population of the eastern part of city – that’s at least 200,000 people and then in retaliation for that attack a nearby pumping station that pumps water to the entire western part of the city – upwards to 1.5 million people – was deliberately switched off”, he told the BBC.