White Helmet volunteer Anwar with his three daughters in northwest Syria. All three girls were killed on Tuesday by Assad regime shelling.

As Russia and the Assad regime kill at least 30 more civilians in attacks on northwest Syria over two days, Moscow is threatening to block cross-border aid to those deprived and displaced by 104 months of conflict.

At least 24 people, including eight women and six children, were killed on Tuesday, after the slaying of two women and four children the previous day.

Nine civilians perished in Telmenes, south of Idlib city. Nearby Maasran was attacked for the second day in a row, with at least four slain and scores injured.

Three women and three children were killed by shelling on regime shelling on Bdama, west of Idlib. Among them were the wife and three civilians of a White Helmets rescuer.

The volunteer, Anwar, said, “My girls are my life.”

Russian and Syrian State media ignored the killings. The pro-Assad blog Al Masdar cheered, “Russian, Syrian Air Forces Launch more airstrikes in past 48 hours than all of December”.

After a pause because of bad weather, Russia and the Assad regime renewed their deadly bombing last weekend. Markets and camps, home to many Syrians who fled Russian-regime attacks elsewhere in the country, have been targeted.

Since late April, a Russia-regime offensive has killed at least 1,100 civilians, injured thousands, and displaced more than 500,000. Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a “pause” in the airstrikes in early September, but they resumed in early November, killing scores of civilians — most of them children — and displacing another 90,000.

The greater Idlib area has about 3 million people, 20% of Syria’s population after 104 months of conflict.

Russia: We Will Block Aid Resolution

Moscow’s Ambassador to the UN, Vassily Nebenzia, has threatened a Security Council veto to block extension of the mandate for cross-border assistance.

The UN and humanitarian agencies have been providing the aid since 2013 from Turkey, Iraq and Jordan at four authorized crossing, supporting millions of Syrians.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said an extension is essential. A resolution drafted by Belgium, Kuwait and Germany adds a fifth crossing, the third from Turkey. In a joint statement on Tuesday, the three sponsors and seven other countries on the 15-member Security Council said:

The consequences of a non-renewal of the mechanism would be disastrous. This is a mechanism that enables life-saving assistance to reach four million people in Syria.”

But Russia is objecting to the additional crossing, and demanding that the Iraqi and Jordanian crossings be closed.

Nebenzia said the resolution is “unacceptable and inviable”: “If it so happens that our draft does not pass, this will mean that the mechanism that we have proposed to extend will not be extended.”

Russia and China abstained last year on the extension of approval.

Moscow has vetoed 13 Security Council resolutions since the Syrian uprising began in March 2011. The measure sought to limit violence and protect civilians, but Moscow claims they restrict Syrian sovereignty.

Secretary-General Guterres appealed to the Council in a report on Monday:

This aid has staved off an even larger humanitarian crisis inside Syria.

While I welcome ongoing efforts to scale up humanitarian assistance delivered from inside the Syrian Arab Republic, I reiterate that the United Nations does not have an alternative means of reaching people in the areas in which cross-border assistance is being provided.

Throughout the 104-month conflict, the Assad regime and Russia have used sieges to try and break resistance in opposition areas. The aid cut-off would threaten the greater Idlib area and reinforce the Russian-regime effort to empty the Rukban camp, in southeast Syria near the Jordanian border, of the remaining 13,000 displaced Syrians.

See Syria Daily, Dec 15: Activists — Regime Seizes 174 of Rukban Camp’s Men