Warplanes mount new strikes on rebel-held Aleppo

Rebel-held districts in east Aleppo came under intense air and artillery fire for a fifth night as the army prepared a ground offensive to recapture the whole of the divided city.

Intensified bombings on the Syrian city of Aleppo have left at least two million persons without water, the United Nations said. The Local Coordination Committees, another monitoring group, said 49 were killed on Saturday alone.

Residents of the rebel-held half of the city said warplanes had unleashed unprecedented firepower.

“Since the beginning of the crisis, Aleppo has not been subjected to such a vicious campaign”, said Mohammed Abu Jaafar, a forensics expert based in the city. “Aleppo is being wiped out”.

Medics said hospital space and supplies were running low, while antigovernment activists shared videos of wounded men in bloodstained bandages sprawled on crowded clinic floors.

The civil defence organisation known as the White Helmets was left overwhelmed by the scale of the destruction, particularly after several of its bases were damaged in bombing yesterday. It has repeatedly changed hands between government forces and insurgents.

On Saturday government troops were reported to have captured the rebel stronghold of Handarat to the north of Aleppo, further tightening their grip on the city.

The capture of the Handarat camp a few miles north of Aleppo marked the first major ground advance of the offensive, which the government announced on Thursday.

Another military source in Damascus said “the goal of the operation will be to expand the area under the army’s control”. The camp, which is nearly empty and largely destroyed, has seen intense fighting and bombardment in recent years, and changed hands multiple times.

Speaking to Anadolu Agency, Najib Ansari said that the warplanes targeted the districts of Bustan al-Qasr, Mashhad, al-Kallasa, Salihiya, and al-Fardos, all now under siege by the Bashar al-Assad regime. It said “the criminal campaign aims to settle worldwide accounts at the expense of Syrians’ blood”.

Speaking at the U.N. General Assembly in New York, Syria’s top diplomat, Walid al-Moallem, told gathered leaders that his government’s belief in military victory was being strengthened by its “great strides in the war against terrorism”.

Residents say the bombing over the past three days has been some of the heaviest since the war began.

Residents now have to resort to contaminated water and are now at risk from diseases and parasites, a situation that could be “catastrophic”, according to Unicef spokesman Kieran Dwyer.

“It would be absolutely the stuff of myth and history”, he said.

A man at a site recently hit by what activists said was a Scud missile in Aleppo’s Ard al-Hamra neighborhood, February 23, 2013.

United Nations children’s charity, UNICEF, said this week’s renewed airstrikes – which further dashed hopes of reviving last week’s cease-fire – had damaged a water pumping station which supplies about 250,000 people in rebel-held eastern parts and violence is preventing fix teams from reaching it.

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

“It is critical for children’s survival that all parties to the conflict stop attacks on water infrastructure, provide access to assess and fix damage to Bab al-Nairab station, and switch the water back on at the Suleiman al-Halabi station”.