PHOTO: A White Helmets volunteer rescues a child from pro-Assad bombing of Khan Sheikhoun in Idlib Province in northwest Syria on Tuesday
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UPDATE 1455: Pro-Assad forces have continued their advance on the front west of Aleppo city, capturing the Hikmeh school.
The takeover of the school was possible after the forces — Hezbollah, Iranian troops, and Tiger Forces paramilitaries — captured the 1070 Housing Complex on Tuesday after 72 hours of shelling and ground attacks.
Syria Developing: Pro-Assad Forces Claim Control of Key Area Near Aleppo
The occupation of the school expands the area protecting against a rebel counter-attack.
Rebels took the school during an offensive in early August. They continued to hold the position despite Russian-regime attacks reimposing the siege on opposition areas of eastern Aleppo city a few weeks later.
ORIGINAL ENTRY: Another 88 people were killed across Syria on Tuesday, as Russia threatened the resumption of bombing of opposition-held areas of Aleppo.
The pro-opposition Local Coordination Committee said 29 children and 10 women were among the casualties.
Of the deaths, 39 were in Idlib Province, including those from bombing of the town of Khan Sheikhoun and 20 were in the Damascus suburbs.
Only seven deaths were reported in Aleppo Province, from the bombing of the town of Kafrnaya. However, Russian sources sent out a warning that they were ready to end a three-week pause of almost all attacks on eastern Aleppo city.
A Russian Defense Ministry source told the Interfax news agency that airstrikes would resume “in coming hours”. However, the Ministry denied responsibility for the killings in Idlib Province, with a spokesman insisting, “Russian warplanes flew no sorties in the mentioned area on November 8 and delivered no air strikes.”
Russia and the Assad regime killed more than 600 civilians in and near Aleppo between September 19 and October 18, beginning with the destruction of a UN aid convoy.
Facing international political pressure, Moscow announced on October 18 that it was pausing the aerial attacks on eastern Aleppo city. However, the assault has considered outside the city.
“More than 75 people have been killed in recent days in the western Aleppo countryside,” Hussein Abu Ali, a Civil Defense volunteer in Orem al-Kubra, said this week.
On Tuesday the Defense Ministry said it would launch missiles from its flagship aircraft carrier, the Admiral Kuznetsov, in the eastern Mediterranean.
“The attacks are to hit the long-range approaches to the city,” a Defense Ministry spokesman said.
The Admiral Kuznetsov is escorted by several other battleships, including frigates with cruise missiles. The fleet left a Russian base in the Barents Sea in mid-October.
Another Malnutrition Death in Besieged Madaya
Syria Direct documents another death from malnutrition in Madaya, the town northwest of Damascus besieged since July 2015.
Deebo Ibrahim al-Kuwayfi, 54, died of kidney failure — a condition threatening at least 25 of Maday’s remaining 40,000 residents. Seven are in “extremely critical condition,” according to Dr. Mohammed Darwish, one of Madaya’s three remaining medical professionals.
None of the patients has been allowed to leave the town, and the siege has limited medical supplies to mild painkillers.
A spokeswoman with the Syrian Arab Red Crescent (SARC), a regime-affiliated aid organization, said it “is ready to evacuate patients when an agreement between the parties is reached”.
Scores of people died from starvation in Madaya in winter 2015. After international attention was drawn to the threat of more deaths, the Assad regime allowed limited aid; however, the siege has been maintained.
