Syrian Government Forces Press Attack in East Aleppo

Lavrov said Syrian military operations had been suspended Thursday to allow some 8,000 civilians to escape, though such a truce couldn’t be confirmed.

Capt. Abdel-Salam Abdel-Razek of the rebel Nour el-Din el-Zinki faction says the future of the city of Aleppo is to be negotiated during this humanitarian pause, which the rebels want the United Nations to monitor.

11 patients had died from lack of medication or been killed in crossfire before ICRC and Syrian Arab Red Crescent teams could reach them, it said.

A day earlier at the foreign ministers’ meeting in Hamburg, Germany, Lavrov had told Russian journalists that the Syrian army had halted fighting in eastern Aleppo amid an operation to evacuate civilians.

The UN reported Friday that hundreds of men appeared to have gone missing since fleeing eastern Aleppo for government-held territory, following on concerns raised by human rights group Amnesty International in late November.

It said the figure included residents who had sought refuge in the government-held west of the city and a Kurdish-controlled enclave, but not those who fled to remaining rebel territory.

Sergei Lavrov on Friday vowed that Russian Federation would continue fighting armed opposition groups in Aleppo, a day after he announced a suspension of operations in the besieged Syrian city.

He stated worries over reports that the Fatah al-Sham Front (formerly al-Nusra Front) and the Abu Amara Battalion are alleged to have abducted and killed an unknown number of civilians who requested the armed groups leave their neighborhoods to spare the lives of civilians.

“Diplomacy has not delivered for the people of Aleppo”, she said.

However, there was no mention of the rebels withdrawing their fighters from Aleppo, a pre-condition set by the Syrian government for talks. It was not clear whether they were fighters or civilians.

The move comes just days after the Security Council failed to adopt a similar resolution demanding a cease-fire in Aleppo because China and Russian Federation vetoed it.

In this instance Russia’s Ministry of Defence went a step further, accusing “the backers of terror from the U.S., United Kingdom and France” for the deaths of the medics due to their support for anti-Assad rebels.

In the last week government forces steadily gained ground until on Wednesday – after a highly symbolic retreat from the Old City – the rebels called for the ceasefire to allow thousands of civilians to evacuate.

The fall of eastern Aleppo, the only major urban centre still in rebel hands, would be a major blow to the opposition, freeing government forces up for deployment elsewhere and strengthening President Bashar al-Assad’s claim to power.

In Russia, Lt. Gen. Sergei Rudskoi of the military’s General Staff said on Friday that 10,500 civilians – including 4,015 children – have left Aleppo’s eastern neighborhoods in the last 24 hours. “Russian army medics fought for several days to save his life”, the defence ministry said in a statement carried by Russian news agencies.