Airstrikes in Aleppo Kill at Least 5 People
by VOA News April 30, 2016
About 30 airstrikes by Syrian government warplanes and helicopter gunships hit rebel-held areas of the northern city of Aleppo Saturday killing at least five people.
According to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, nearly 250 civilians have died in shelling, rocket fire and air raids in the contested city since April 22. Among those killed were at least 50 people in a hospital that was hit in an airstrike.
The surge of violence comes as the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) warned that the intensification of fighting could bring many people closer to a humanitarian disaster in Aleppo, Syria's largest city and former commercial center.
Kerry travels to Geneva
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry will travel to Geneva Sunday for talks on the Syrian situation. The State Department said in a Saturday release that Kerry will discuss ongoing efforts to reaffirm a cessation of hostilities throughout Syria.
Aleppo was left out of the temporary U.S.-Russian brokered cease-fire, which appeared to hold in the regime stronghold coastal province of Latakia, Damascus and the nearby suburb of Eastern Ghouta, a rebel bastion, ahead of the truce deadline.
U.S. officials said Friday a renewed cessation of hostilities in the two regions was to take effect at midnight Damascus time.
A Syrian government statement said the truce would begin Saturday (at 2200 UTC Friday) and last for 24 hours in Damascus and the Eastern Ghouta region. It said a similar arrangement in Latakia is expected to last for 72 hours.
"It is our view that this, essentially, would be a refreshment of the cessation of hostilities and getting both sides to commit to refreshing the commitments that they made," said White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest.
Kerry - Lavrov discuss plan
U.S. officials say Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov discussed details of the plan on Friday. However, officials say talks on the renewed cessation had been underway for some time.
Officials said the U.S., Russia and other members of the 17-nation International Syria Support Group would use their influence with either the Syrian regime or the opposition to try to get both sides to comply.
A senior State Department official said the decision to focus on quelling unrest in Latakia and Eastern Ghouta is not an attempt to ignore escalating violence in Aleppo.
"There should not be any thinking that anything was set aside," said the official in a Friday briefing.
"We have moved forward on what we were able to move forward with right now," the official added, saying negotiators hoped to be able to make progress on Aleppo as soon as possible.
State Department spokesman Mark Toner said the plans for Latakia and Eastern Ghouta would test the commitment that all of the parties made to the initial cessation of hostilities.
"This is a recommitment and it is a test for the Russians, for the regime as well as for the opposition," he said.
Attacks continue
Rebels continued to hit government-controlled neighborhoods in the northern city Aleppo with rocket and artillery fire Friday. State media said a direct hit on a mosque killed 15 people and wounded 30.
The Syrian government also kept up its bombing raids. Civil-defense officials said the regime's airstrikes hit a well-known medical clinic, wounding several people, just over 24 hours after similar raids destroyed a hospital in Aleppo.
The medical group Doctors without Borders said 50 people, including six of its staff members, were killed when the al-Quds Hospital was hit late Wednesday night.
Kerry, speaking in Washington, said targeting of the hospital appeared to have been "deliberate." There was no clear account about whose planes were involved, but reports from Aleppo said they were either Russian or Syrian aircraft.
More than 80 international and Syrian NGOs signed an urgent statement Friday demanding that President Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin respond to appeals by the United Nations and try to stop the bloodshed.
From Geneva, U.N. rights chief Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein said this week's violence in Syria showed a "monstrous disregard for civilians' lives by all parties to the conflict."
Rebels demanding the removal of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and the government troops opposing them control separate parts of Aleppo, and portions of the surrounding province are in the hands of numerous other fighters, including members of al-Qaida and the Islamic State terror group.
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