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2016-11-17 Syria-Lebanon-Iran
Syrian warbirds hit Aleppo hospital
[ARA News] Aleppo – Syrian regime’s warplanes launched on Wednesday several airstrikes in Aleppo, targeting the rebel-held eastern part of the city.

Pro-regime forces hit the neighbourhoods of Shaar, Karam al-Bek and Sakhour in eastern Aleppo with barrel bombs and missiles.

A children’s hospital, blood bank and ambulances were main targets in Wednesday’s air raids.

“Pro-Assad air force bombed al-Bayan Children’s Hospital in Aleppo, causing dozens of casualties,” local media activist Ahmed Halwani told ARA News.

At least 26 civilians, including children, were killed in the airstrikes.

“Many others remained trapped under the rubble,” Halwani reported.

In the meantime, local rescue teams continued the search for survivors under the ruins of the destroyed buildings.

Airstrikes have resumed in Aleppo since Tuesday, after a Russian-sponsored three-week moratorium ended.

More from Arab News
BEIRUT/UNITED NATIONS: Air strikes hit near a children’s hospital and a school in rebel-held eastern Aleppo on Wednesday in the second day of renewed bombing that has killed at least 20 people, a war monitor, medics, and emergency workers said.

The fresh attacks came just hours after a United Nation human rights committee approved a resolution strongly condemning the recent escalation of attacks in Aleppo and continuing violence by the Syrian government against its own people.

The committee voted 116-15 with 49 abstentions in favor of the draft resolution on Tuesday. It is virtually certain to be adopted when the assembly votes next month.

The draft resolution demands that Syrian authorities “immediately put an end to all indiscriminate attacks, including those involving the use of terror tactics, air strikes, barrel and vacuum bombs, incendiary weapons, chemical weapons and heavy artillery.”

It “deplores and condemns in the strongest terms” widespread human rights violations by the Syrian government.

The draft calls for a cease-fire by all parties, saying this “is essential to achieve a political solution.”

Wednesday's air strikes are part of a wider escalation by the Syrian government and its allies including Russia, which launched coordinated missile strikes against rebels in Syria on Tuesday and for the first time used its only aircraft carrier.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor, said the air strikes on eastern Aleppo had killed at least five children and an emergency worker. They were carried out by either Russian or Syrian jets, it said.

Russian denial
Moscow has denied reports that its jets hit the city in the renewed wave of bombardment. It says it is sticking to a moratorium on strikes in Aleppo.

The Observatory said districts struck included Shaar, Sukkari and Karam Al-Beik.

Tuesday’s bombing on eastern Aleppo appeared to mark the end of a pause inside the city declared by Russia on Oct. 18.

The Observatory and residents said the city’s east was hit by rocket strikes by jets, barrel bombs dropped from helicopters and artillery fired by government forces.

“The helicopters won’t stop for a single moment,” Bebars Mishal, a Civil Defense worker in rebel-held Aleppo, told Reuters. “Right now, the bombing won’t let up.”

The Civil Defense is a volunteer rescue service that operates in rebel-held areas.

The bombing hit the surroundings of a children’s hospital in the Shaar neighborhood and of a school in the Salah Al-Din neighborhood, the Observatory said.

“We woke up to the bombing and until now, the warplanes and helicopters are running,” said Modar Shekho, a nurse in eastern Aleppo. “The Shaar neighborhood was burned down between yesterday and today.”

Ibrahim Abu Al-Laith, a Civil Defense official, said more than 40 air strikes had hit the Shaar area. “Today the bombardment is very, very fierce,” he said.

Just bombing terrorists

Syrian state television said on Tuesday the Damascus government’s air force took part in strikes against what it called terrorist strongholds in Aleppo’s Old City.

Russia said it had struck Daesh and former Nusra Front sites elsewhere in Syria, without mentioning Aleppo.

State-owned Ikhabariyah television reported large troop deployments along several main fronts in the Aleppo theater in preparation for a major ground offensive that it said was imminent and awaiting “zero hour” to begin.

Aleppo has become the major front in Syria’s 5-1/2-year war pitting President Bashar Assad, supported by Russia, Iran and Shiite militias, against mostly Sunni rebels including groups backed by Turkey, the United States and Gulf monarchies.

Aleppo has for years been divided between the government-held western sector and rebel-held east, which the Syrian army and its allies besieged during the summer. Its allied forces include Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Iraqi Shiite militias.

More from Asharq Al-Awsat
The Syrian regime and Russia resumed military and air operations in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo yesterday, a month after they were suspended. While Moscow insisted that the large scale operation carried out by its forces “does not include Aleppo”, the director of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that it is likely that Russia is participating in the strikes on the city and that its denial is an attempt to shirk responsibility in the event that many civilians are injured.

The director of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights Rami Abdul Rahman told Asharq Al-Awsat that 8 airstrikes were carried out all at once in the eastern neighbourhoods of Aleppo and said that “We know that the Syrian regime does not have the ability to do so”. He also pointed out that “the expansion of Moscow’s strikes to include the countrysides of Homs and Idlib aims to disperse fighters. Abdul Rahman added that “It cannot be said that the major battle for Aleppo that the regime and its allies promised has been launched, especially as question marks remain about their real ability to fight this battle due to the large number of civilians in the targeted neighbourhoods”.

Meanwhile, the military spokesman for the Fastaqim Kama Umirt group Ammar Saqqaar said that initial information indicates that the Syrian regime is mainly responsible for launching strikes on the eastern neighbourhoods of Aleppo which led to many people being wounded and killed. He also indicated in a statement that he made to Asharq Al-Awsat that they are using “missiles that do not aim at specific targets” and therefore the bombing is random. He continued by saying that the raids are not limited to the city but also extend to the countryside where three hospitals were targeted in 24 hours.
Posted by badanov 2016-11-17 00:00|| || Front Page|| [1 views ]  Top
 File under: Govt of Syria 

#1 There must be hospitals on every street corner in Aleppo
Posted by John Frum 2016-11-17 13:20||   2016-11-17 13:20|| Front Page Top

14:43 ed in texas
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