PHOTO: Children leave school during a pause in Wednesday’s bombing of eastern Aleppo city

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Human Rights Watch — Yes, Russia Attacked Schools and Killed Children in Late October
Report: The Food Crisis Worsens

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UPDATE 1810 GMT: After four hours, rescuers save a four-year-old boy trapped in the rubble of his home in eastern Aleppo city on Thursday:

UPDATE 1745 GMT: The Russian Parliament has approved a bill authorizing conscripts to serve inside Syria for up to one year.

The Duma said the measure was for “emergencies or to maintain or restore peace and security and to suppress international terrorist activities outside the territory of Russia, as well as involvement in naval campaigns”.

Russia has always maintained that its ground role, alongside its extensive aerial operations, is limited to advisors. However, numerous Russian “contractors” have been involved in the conflict.

A Russian Kalibr cruise missile, fired from its warships in the eastern Mediterranean, flies towards its target in Aleppo Province:

UPDATE 0925 GMT: The opposition Syrian National Coalition has accused Russia of withdrawing from the International Criminal Court to “to evade accountability for the war crimes its forces are committing against civilians in Syria”.

On Wednesday Moscow announced its formal departure from the ICC, which began functioning on July 1, 2002.

Russia signed the 1998 Rome Statute, which established the court, in 2000 but has never ratified the treaty.

ORIGINAL ENTRY: At least 116 people were killed across Syria on Wednesday, as Russia and the Assad regime carried out intense bombing in and near the country’s largest city Aleppo.

The fatalities included 11 women and 19 children, according to the Local Coordination Committees, the pro-opposition group which documented the deaths.

Of the casualties, 82 were in Aleppo country. Many were in neighborhoods in besieged opposition-held eastern Aleppo city, as regime helicopters covered the area with barrel bombs. Others were in the town of Batabo, west of Aleppo, in attacks by Russian and Syrian warplanes.

Another 25 fatalities were in Hama Province. Some of the documented deaths were victims of torture in regime prisons.

Russia and the regime, who killed more than 600 civilians in eastern Aleppo city between September 19 and October 18, renewed their attacks earlier this week. Pro-Assad forces have besieged the estimated 270,000 residents since late August.

“The helicopters won’t stop for a single moment,” Bebars Mishal, a member of the White Helmets rescuers, said on Wednesday. “Right now, the bombing won’t let up.”

At least 18 barrel bombs were reported to have been dropped on the al-Shaar district alone, one of them near a children’s hospital and school.

The latest attacks are compounding the deaths and deprivation from the siege. The UN reported last week that the final food rations have been distributed. On Tuesday, protests broke out, with ome warehouses opened and food taken. Some accounts said rebels fired over the heads of the crowd to prevent people from taking the remaining stocks.

Hisham Skeif, a member of a local council said, “People are hungry, we understand, but we’re trying to keep things under control, there is oppression, there is anger, I do agree, but the regime is triggering reaction, using starvation as an excuse.”

A rescuer carries a slain child:

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In the continuing assault by Russia and the regime on medical facilities, eight have been struck in the past week and five in the last 48 hours. Eastern Aleppo’s central blood bank was also hit yesterday.

There are only five functioning trauma facilities left in eastern Aleppo, according to Adham Sahloul of the Syrian American Medical Society, Sahloul told the Associated Press news agency.

“Me and my staff and all the patients are sitting in one room in the basement right now,” a pediatrician said from one of the facilities. “We will try to get out when the air strikes leave our sky. Pray for us please.”

In the Salaheddin district of eastern Aleppo city:

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

Rescue workers dash in the Ansari district to help a woman, as a traumatized child cries:

Trying to save the wounded in the Shaar district — a doctor says of one man, “No pulse”:

Bilal Abdul Kareem’s report:

Destruction in Batabo:

A large unexploded Russian bomb near a foosball table:

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Report: Car Bomb in Town Near Turkish Border Kills 25, Including Rebels

A car bomb in Azaz, a strategic town in northwest Syria near the Turkish border, has reportedly killed 25 people.

Yasser al-Yousef of the Nour al-Din al-Zinki rebel group said the bombing targeted a security office of the group, killing 13 fighters.

The Islamic State has regularly bombed in and near Azaz, noted for the movement of personnel and supplies in the Syrian conflict.

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Picture: UN School Destroyed by Pro-Assad Bombing Southwest of Damascus

The destruction inside a school in Khan al-Shih, the town southwest of Damascus which has been under regime assault — including intensive bombing — for almost two months:

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The school was supported by the UN refugee agency UNRWA.