PHOTO: Men in opposition-held area of Aleppo city hold up first shipment of eggs after month-long pro-Assad siege was broken
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- Video: 1st-Hand Report from Scene of Russia-Regime Airstrikes on Idlib Province
- Plea to Evacuate Shot Girl from Besieged Madaya
- Putin Asks Russian Parliament for Indefinite Deployment of Forces
WEDNESDAY FEATURE
Selling A Kidney So Your Family Survives
UPDATE 1745 GMT: The Russian Ministry of Defense has said it will observe a three-hour ceasefire each day to allow humanitarian aid into Aleppo city.
“To guarantee total security for the convoys to Aleppo there will be humanitarian windows established from 10am to 1pm local time starting tomorrow,” the Ministry said. “All military hostilities, aviation strikes and artillery strikes will be halted.”
The head of UN humanitarian operations, Stephen O’Brien, responded that the plan is insufficient to reach all civilians in need: “To meet that capacity of need, you need two lanes and you need to have about 48 hours to get sufficient trucks in.”
Two weeks ago, the Russian Defense Ministry proclaimed that it was establishing seven “humanitarian corridors” out of opposition-held eastern Aleppo city for civilians and surrendering rebels; however, residents and activists say that the corridors never existed.
The Russian announcement was overtaken within 48 hours by a rebel offensive southwest of Aleppo that eventually broke the month-long siege by pro-Assad forces.
The Defense Ministry insisted on Wednesday that “more than 1,000 [rebels] were killed and about 2,000 wounded” in the past food days.
UPDATE 0845 GMT: Residents in an opposition-held area of eastern Aleppo city collect food given away by the rebel blocs Jaish al-Fatah and Fatah Halab:
ORIGINAL ENTRY: The UN has called on Tuesday for a ceasefire in Aleppo, as pro-Assad forces try to hold a line against rebels advancing southwest of Syria’s largest city.
UN officials said that two million people lack access to food, medical, and clean running water, and that repairs are needed for electricity networks that drive water pumping stations.
The stations were heavily damaged in Russian-regime attacks on infrastructure last week, as airstrikes tried to check the offensive by the rebel bloc Jaish al-Fatah.
“In the [opposition-held] eastern parts of Aleppo up to 300,000 people – over a third of them are children – are relying on water from wells which are potentially contaminated by fecal matter and unsafe to drink,” UNICEF spokesman Christophe Boulierac told a briefing.
“The U.N. is extremely concerned that the consequences will be dire for millions of civilians if the electricity and water networks are not immediately repaired,” said the statement of Yacoub El Hillo, the Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator for Syria, and Kevin Kennedy, the regional humanitarian coordinator for the Syria crisis.
Pro-opposition activists questioned why the UN was calling for a ceasefire now, when it did not do so last month as pro-Assad forces — enabled by the Russian aerial operations — established a siege on opposition areas by cutting off the last route north of Aleppo.
Rebels broke the siege last weekend in their advance on the southwestern front, although the 2-km (1.25-mile) corridor is still not secure enough for convoys and significant supplies of food and essential goods.
See Syria Daily, August 7: Rebels Break Aleppo Siege
On Monday, the UN Security Council discussed the humanitarian situation, with presentations by doctors and rescue workers who spoke of the effect of constant Russian and regime bombing of opposition areas.
US Ambassador Samantha Power said the UN could not allow “civilians on both sides of Aleppo [to] be cut off from the basic assistance they need”.
However, Russia’s Deputy Ambassador Vladimir Safronkov said the priority must be efforts to combat terrorism — effectively the support of the Assad regime’s campaign against rebels — and then a renewal of Syrian peace talks.
See Syria Daily: UN Discusses Humanitarian Situation in Aleppo
Videos: 1st-Hand Reports from Scene of Russia-Regime Airstrikes on Idlib Province
Bilal Abdul Kareem reports from the scene of this week’s Russian-regime airstrikes, causing scores of casualties, on cities and towns in Idlib Province in northwest Syria.
Among the targets are the town of Saraqeb, bombarded constantly for more than a week after a Russian helicopter was shot down nearby, and a hospital in the town of Miles, destroying the facility and killing at least 13 staff and patients.
Footage from White Helmets rescuers of an attack on the town of Ariha:
Russian-Assad jets target residential areas in Ariha in #Idlib countryside#Syria #Orient pic.twitter.com/ZPDRuTaj9A
— Orient News English (@OrientNewsEn) August 10, 2016
Plea to Evacuate Shot Girl from Besieged Madaya
The mother of a 9-year-old girl, wounded in the besieged town of Madaya by a regime sniper, has pleaded for her medical evacuation.
The girl, Ghina, was walking with her younger sister when she was hit in the upper-left thigh, shattering the bone, and then the hand. Her mother told Syria Direct:
She’s in need of urgent trauma surgery. She has a displaced fracture, a shattered bone and a severed nerve in her upper left thigh. This is the eighth day she has been suffering. I gave her painkillers, but it’s not enough. Her screaming fills the house day and night—the pain is too intense.
What we need is for a humanitarian or human rights organization, either through the Red Crescent or Red Cross, to help us evacuate her so she can receive proper treatment. She needs to go to either Damascus or Lebanon, really anywhere but here, to receive surgery.
Those injured in Madaya, surrounded by the Syrian military and Hezbollah, can only be taken out of the town if they are exchanged for a parallel evacuation from two regime enclaves north of opposition-held Idlib city.
Residents say troops at 65 checkpoints around Madaya and nearby Zabadani fire upon anybody who gets too close.
More than 100 people are estimated to have died from starvation in Madaya, which was only allowed a limited amount of aid from January after international pressure on the Assad regime.
Putin Asks Russian Parliament for Indefinite Deployment of Forces
Russian President Vladimir Putin has asked Parliament for an unlimited involvement of Moscow’s military in the Syrian conflict, according to State outlet TASS.
Deputy Speaker Sergei Zheleznyak told the site:
There is no doubt that the document of the agreement between Russia and Syria on the indefinite deployment of a Russian air force group in the region of the Hmeimim airbase, which has been submitted for ratification will be supported by the majority of members of Parliament and approved.
In March, Putin said Russia had achieved its goals for last autumn’s intervention and said most of the warplanes could return.
However, the pull-out was limited. As a “cessation of hostilities” broke down and rebels not only held out but counter-attacked in northwest Syria, Moscow has stepped up bombing, including of infrastructure and civilian areas.
