PHOTO: Destruction in al-Wa’er in Homs city from Russian missile strikes on Tuesday

UPDATE 1245 GMT: At least 15 people, including four children, have been killed and dozens injured in the regime’s attack on eastern Aleppo city on Wednesday.

In the Salaheddin district:

A man carries a severed arm as he walks in the rubble of a street:

Children leave school after airstrikes and shelling:

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UPDATE 1215 GMT: The regime has carried out intensive airstrikes and shelling of opposition-held areas of eastern Aleppo city. Graphic images of casualties, including children, have been posted.

Images from the Salaheddin district in eastern Aleppo city:

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ORIGINAL ENTRY: Russia renewed its bombing of besieged opposition-held parts of Aleppo city on Tuesday, and Moscow’s ships and warplanes also fired missiles on areas in Idlib and Homs Provinces.

Activists said at least 55 people were killed in the attacks.

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu announced the launch of operations by warships, including Moscow’s flagship aircraft carrier, which had been deployed in the eastern Mediterranean off the coast of Syria last week. Cruise missiles were fired towards northwest Syria, while Su-33 jet fighters carried out raids.

Shoigu did not acknowledge the attacks on Aleppo and on civilian areas, saying instead:

Today at 10:30 and 11:00 we launched a large-scale operation against the positions of Islamic State and al-Nusra [the jihadist group Jabhat Fatah al-Sham] in the provinces of Idlib and Homs.

The main objectives of these strikes are ammunition warehouses and terrorist training centers, as well as plants for the production of various kinds of weapons of mass destruction.

However, reports on the ground testified to strikes on the neighborhoods of al-Haydaria, Sakhour, Firdous, and Masakan Hanano in eastern Aleppo city.

Rooftop footage from eastern Aleppo of the family of Fatima al-Abed living among the attacks — “The situation today is very bad”:

Besieged al-Wa’er in Homs city was also bombarded heavily, despite an agreement in September in which several hundred rebels and their families left for Idlib Province. Opposition activists reported 10 missile strikes, with dozens of casualties.

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The Russian Defense Ministry’s promotion of its strikes:

In his latest interview with international media, President Assad continued to deny any Russian and regime siege and attacks on civilians, insisting:

The part that you mention in Aleppo, what they call it the eastern part, is occupied by the terrorists for the last three years, and they have been using the civilians as human shields….

We have two missions: the first one is to fight those terrorists to liberate that area and the civilians from those terrorists, and at the same time to try to find a solution to evacuate that area from those terrorists.

A US Pentagon spokesman, Jeff Davis, said the military was looking into the strikes. However, the State Department’s Elizabeth Trudeau criticism recent Russian bombing of hospitals across northwest Syria.

The Russian Defense Ministry immediately turned against the Americans, with spokesman Igor Konashenkov blasting:

Reiterating the same rumors about alleged today’s bombing of “five hospitals” and “one mobile hospital” only confirms that all public rhetoric of the US Department of State about the situation in Syria is based on out-and-out lies.

Video and photographic evidences, as well as the testimony of doctors, have confirmed the latest Russian attacks. They incude the use of bunker-buster bombs on underground medical facilities.

Asad: “Not a Lot of Expectations” of Trump’s US

Assad put out standard lines about the “very essential” support of his regime by Russia, Iran, and Hezbollah, as “terrorists have been supported by tens of foreign countries, so Syria alone wouldn’t be able to face this kind of war without the help of its friends”. His sharpest criticism was of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan: “sick person…megalomaniac President…not stable…out of touch with reality”.

Commenting about US President-elect Donald Trump, Assad was cautious:

We don’t have a lot of expectations because the American administration is not only about the President; it’s about different powers within this administration, the different lobbies that they are going to influence any President. So, we have to wait and see when he embarks his new mission, let’s say, or position within this administration as President in two months’ time. But we always say we have wishful thinking that the United States would be unbiased, respect the international law, no interfere in other countries around the world, and of course stop supporting terrorists in Syria.

Of Trump’s statement that he is prepared to work with the regime against “terrorism”, Assad asked, “Can he deliver?”