UN urges Turkey to open border; warns Aleppo could lack aid

The report said the UN’s misreporting of the numbers under siege meant that many people remained “unaware of the extent of the crisis and the global response has been muted as a result”. The council usually finds it hard to reach consensus on Syria because Russian Federation, one of the five permanent veto powers, strongly backs the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. That effort may take months.

“Each time they would cry, we would have to shush them”, he said.

The U.N.is anxious the government advance could cut off the last link for civilians in rebel-held parts of Aleppo with the main Turkish border crossing, which has long served as the lifeline for insurgent-controlled territory.

Lavrov is set to meet with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Thursday in Munich.

The landscape has quickly grown more tangled. Islamic State claimed responsibility.

20 people were also wounded in the attack.

Merkel said the two leaders also discussed how to combine the work of Turkey’s coast guard with that of the EU’s Frontex border agency.

Turkey, already home to 2.5 million Syrians, the world’s biggest refugee population, has so far kept its frontier mostly closed to the latest wave of displaced.

At the Turkish border gate of Oncupinar, opposite Syria’s Bab al-Salameh crossing, several dozen Syrian refugees waited on Monday in the hope that it would be opened so that their friends or family could cross into Turkey.

BORODAVKIN: From the very outset of the Syrian conflict, Russian Federation was for negotiations and was proposing to immediately start negotiations until finally we pursued our partners to switch to this political diplomatic mode.

“There is no regime advance”, he added.

KILIS, Turkey (AP) – Turkey must open its doors to the tens of thousands of Syrians who have massed at the border after fleeing violence, the United Nations demanded Tuesday, as an aide group said tents on the Syrian side are overcrowded and food in short supply. The Human Rights Watch report said that cluster munitions, which are widely banned, have been used in at least 14 attacks across five provinces since January 26. “They are not able to hold out against the Russian air force”. These constituted war crimes and in the case of Islamic State also crimes against humanity, it said.

“The asymmetrical balance is so much in favor of the regime”, he said.

“In the resolution, the Security Council demands that all sides stop attacks on civilians and civilian targets without delay, and in particular the use of indiscriminate weapons, such as bomb attacks from the air”.

The Russians and Iranians are helping Assad’s forces, going after a coalition of rebels in the eastern part of the city. Rebels say they will not attend without a halt to the bombing. “The (Syrian) regime is advancing only thanks to the Russian warplanes and Shiite militias”.

In recent days, a Russian-backed Syrian government offensive around the country’s largest city Aleppo has sent an estimated 75,000 Syrians fleeing toward the border with Turkey, according to Abdulsalam al-Shareef, a consultant for the Turkish charity group Humanitarian Relief Foundation, or IHH.

Syrian Democratic Forces spokesman Talal Silo said in an interview at his headquarters in Hasakah, in northern Syria, that rebels were given a choice to join his alliance.

But no matter how united they are, they aren’t a match for the regime and its partners.

Syrian army troops meanwhile, recaptured another village north of Aleppo on Monday, bringing troops and allied militiamen to within a few miles (kilometers) of the Turkish border.

“The answer to this crisis is for the peace process to continue in Syria and for the conflict to be solved”, Spindler said.

Felicia Schwartz in Washington and Dana Ballout contributed to this article.