Syria’s Aleppo rocked again by airstrikes; attacks illustrate failed diplomacy

As rescuers in the Syrian city of Aleppo searched for survivors between bursts of bombardment, the father of one trapped toddler tore frantically at the debris.

An onlooker warned him to be careful to avoid further injuring the child: “He’s crying – go slowly, go slowly!”

And then the little boy chimed in, trying to calm the adults: “All right, Daddy. All right.”

Seconds later, video showed him being lifted free — one of the many harrowing images posted Friday by pro-opposition activists as the eastern sector of Syria’s largest city was pounded for a second day by intense airstrikes.

The onslaught by Syrian government forces and their Russian backers again coincided with talks on the sidelines of the General Assembly in New York aimed at reviving a cease-fire that collapsed this week. The United States and Russia, which had brokered the truce this month, appeared to remain at loggerheads Friday over how to mend it.

Each blamed the other for the breakdown, but both insisted they wanted to salvage the cease-fire.

In Aleppo, activists and witnesses described powerful explosions that rocked opposition-held neighborhoods in the divided city, leaving gaping craters. And humanitarian aid groups were among those hit.

Ammar Salmo, head of the Aleppo branch of the volunteer civil-defense group known as the White Helmets, said several of the group’s centers were hit in the latest round of bombardment and one of its members was killed.

He put overall fatalities at more than 80; other activists said they expected the toll to rise. Medical facilities were overwhelmed with the injured, and the United Nations reported that the destruction of pumping stations had reduced the water supply to a trickle, raising the threat of waterborne diseases.

Aleppo, a onetime cultural treasure and commercial center, has become a crucible of suffering — but is also seen by both sides as a strategic prize. If the government were able to regain control of the rebel-held eastern sector, it would mark the war’s most serious setback for the opposition.

Syrian state media, which had announced the start of the Aleppo offensive Thursday, quoted a military official as saying that the bombardment was the prelude to a planned ground incursion — a scenario that most observers believe would lead to an urban bloodbath.

The surge of violence in recent days shattered a brief lull brought about by the cease-fire that took effect Sept. 12. The talks in New York had been intended to shore up the truce and lay the groundwork for peace talks, but instead descended into mutual recriminations.

Addressing the General Assembly on Friday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov blamed opposition attacks against Syrian government forces for undermining the truce. “This is not the way a cessation of hostilities should be maintained,” he said.

And Lavrov assigned larger blame to the United States and its allies for a “bleeding” Middle East, saying Western policies had spawned chaos and disorder across the region.

Secretary of State John F. Kerry, who met again Friday with Lavrov, has had harsh words as well for Syrian President Bashar Assad and his Russian backers. In an acrimonious open session of the U.N. Security Council this week, Kerry decried “word games … with respect to war and peace, life and death.”

As has been the pattern in more than five years of brutal warfare in Syria, civilians in Aleppo’s rebel-held areas bore the brunt of the violence, huddling in homes that provided little shelter against what activists described as unrelenting strikes by warplanes and helicopters. Russian airpower has been a crucial factor in propping up the Assad government.

Moscow has rejected Kerry’s call for a no-fly zone over key aid routes in northern Syria. The renewed conflict, including a deadly strike on a U.N. aid convoy outside Aleppo on Monday night, also has blocked the delivery of most humanitarian supplies to opposition-held areas, though one convoy reached a besieged district outside Damascus on Thursday.

Times staff writer King reported from Washington and special correspondent Bulos from Baghdad.

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UPDATES:

2:35 p.m.: This story was updated with additional comments and details about the bombardment.

This article was originally published at 8:35 a.m.