Syria army advances as UN decries Aleppo's 'living hell'

Syrian volunteers carry an air strike victim on a stretcher in the rebel-held area of Al Heluk in Aleppo. Thaer Mohammed / AFP

Aleppo // Syrian regime forces advanced Sunday in Aleppo after Russia unleashed dozens of air strikes, as the UN’s top aid official decried the “living hell” suffered by residents in the city’s rebel-held east.

Dozens of bombs pounded multiple battlefronts in the devastated city. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Russian raids “helped regime forces to advance in the north of the city,” where they reached the outskirts of the opposition-held Al Heluk district.

If loyalist fighters seize Al Heluk, Bustan Al Basha and Sakhur – all rebel-controlled neighbourhoods in Aleppo’s north – they will confine opposition factions to a small section of the city’s south-east.

Bashar Al Assad’s Russian-backed military campaign in Aleppo has sparked international outrage after a series of air strikes on civilian infrastructure, including most recently on the largest hospital in the city’s east.

Two barrel bombs hit the M10 hospital on Saturday, according to the Syrian American Medical Society, which supports the facility.

United Nations aid chief Stephen O’Brien fiercely criticised the attack and called on Sunday for immediate action to end the “living hell” of civilians in Aleppo’s east.

“The health care system in eastern Aleppo is all but obliterated. Medical facilities are being hit one by one,” Mr O’Brien said.

The latest indiscriminate bombings subjected residents to “a level of savagery that no human should have to endure.

“The clock is ticking. Stop the carnage now,” he added.

M10 had already been hit on Wednesday along with the second-largest hospital in the area, M2.

That bombardment badly damaged the two facilities and left only six fully functional hospitals in east Aleppo.

On Saturday, European Parliament president Martin Schulz called the hospital bombing a “war crime”, tweeting that the international community “must unite to prevent the city’s annihilation”.

Syria’s armed forces on Sunday called on rebel fighters in east Aleppo to abandon their positions “and let civilians live their normal lives.”

“The Russian and Syrian armies will secure safe passage and aid” to any opposition fighters that defect, said the statement, distributed on Syrian state news agency Sana.

Also on Sunday, Russian strikes in the central Syrian province of Hama killed six members of a rebel group that has received US backing, according to the Observatory.

Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman said 13 Russian raids targeted a base used by Jaish Al Izzah, which was also hit by Moscow’s warplanes in the early days of its military intervention in Syria last year.

Diplomatic efforts to put an end to Syria’s war – which has killed more than 300,000 people – have all but collapsed.

Russia and the United States brokered a ceasefire deal in early September, hoping it could open a path to peace – but the truce fell apart a week later.

Relations between the two world powers have since been strained, but their top diplomats have continued to seek a way forward.

Russia said its Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov spoke to his American counterpart John Kerry on Saturday and they “examined the situation in Syria, including the possibility of normalising the situation around Aleppo.”

*Agence France-Presse