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Analysis: Obama Declares Fight is With “Terrorists” Rather Than Assad


Aid workers in besieged opposition-held eastern Aleppo city distributed the last available food rations on Thursday.

Russia and the Assad regime cut off food and supplies to the area and its estimated 270,000 people in late August. They have blocked any renewed aid, bombing a UN convoy on September 19 and killing dozens of civilians including rescuers.

UN humanitarian adviser Jan Egeland insisted that he is hopeful of a deal on a four-part humanitarian plan that the UN sent to all parties to the conflict several days ago. The proposal includes delivery of food and medical supplies, medical evacuations, and access for health workers.

“I do believe we will be able to avert mass hunger this winter,” Egeland told reporters in Geneva. “I don’t think anybody wants a quarter of a million people to be starving in east Aleppo,”

The Assad regime has so far prevented any implementation of the plan. Aid was last delivered in late July.

Amid the siege and shortages, prices have soared. Egeland said about 300 people urgently require medical evacuation.

The Russian Defense Ministry maintained the line on Thursday that its military is continuing to arrange “humanitarian pauses”.

Moscow halted almost all bombing of the area on October 18 but has threatened to renew the attacks. It has not stopped airstrikes elsewhere in Aleppo Province and northwest Syria.


Russian Ambassador Uses Photo from Assad Regime’s Chemical Attacks in 2013 to Blame Rebels

Alexander Yakovenko, the Russian Ambassador to the UK, has posted a photo of bodies to prop up Moscow’s claim that rebels have used chlorine in an assault west of Aleppo.

Only problem? The dead in the photo are from the Assad regime’s sarin attacks that killed more than 1,400 people near Damascus in August 2013.