Aleppo - Page 6

In striking language, Pope Francis said Wednesday that those responsible for the bombardment of Aleppo—conducted for days by Syrian and Russian forces—will be called to a reckoning before God for their actions.

Secretary of State John Kerry is threatening to cut off all contacts with Moscow over Syria, unless Russian and Syrian government attacks on Aleppo end.

Syrian government forces and their allies attacked the opposition-held sector of Aleppo on several fronts on Tuesday, the biggest ground assault yet in a massive new campaign that has destroyed a U.S.-backed ceasefire.

Contents: Russian warplanes drop phosphorus bombs and bunker buster bombs on Aleppo; Comparisons of Syria civil war to Sri Lanka civil war; US, UK, UN officials accuse Syria and Russia of barbarism and war crimes

During a UN Security Council crisis meeting on Sunday, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon declared himself “appalled” by the Syrian government’s massive attack on Aleppo, saying it “brings the violence to new levels of barbarity.”

Syrian and Russian warplanes pounded rebel-held east Aleppo on Sunday ahead of a UN Security Council meeting to discuss the worst surge in violence to hit the devastated city in years.

Syrian troops captured a rebel-held area on the edge of Aleppo on Saturday, tightening their siege on opposition-held neighborhoods in the northern city after what residents described as the heaviest air bombardment of the 5 ½-year civil war.

Syrian Dictator Bashar al-Assad has said neither Syria nor its ally Russia launched the bombs that destroyed a United Nations aid convoy carrying food supplies to a rural area west of the besieged Syrian city of Aleppo that killed at least 20 people, including the local director of the Syrian Arab Red Crescent.

It was more than a little discordant to hear Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov tell the U.N. General Assembly on Friday that it is “essential to prevent disruption” of the Syrian ceasefire agreement, while Syrian warplanes — allegedly with Russian help — were showering bombs on the besieged city of Aleppo, with a ground operation waiting in the wings.

The Syrian “ceasefire” decisively ended with a massive attack on the besieged city of Aleppo by Syrian regime (and, allegedly, Russian) forces, with Syrian officials saying a ground operation is imminent as well.

Warplanes launched some of the heaviest air strikes yet on rebel-held areas of Aleppo on Friday after the Russian-backed Syrian army declared an offensive to fully capture Syria’s biggest city, killing off any hope of reviving a ceasefire.

The United States and Russia ended any pretenses Thursday of their cease-fire for Syria remaining in force after days of increased violence and the Syrian military’s announcement of a new offensive in Aleppo.

Contents: Warplanes target and bomb humanitarian aid convoy near Aleppo in Syria; Led by the US, more people are openly expressing total disgust with Bashar al-Assad’s depravity

The US has reached the preliminary conclusion that Russian warplanes bombed an aid convoy and warehouse belonging to the Syrian Arab Red Crescent, two US officials told CNN.

The UN said Tuesday it had suspended all humanitarian aid convoys in Syria after a deadly air raid hit trucks delivering aid near Aleppo, killing a Red Crescent staff member and civilians.

Two 20-truck aid convoys destined for eastern Aleppo with enough supplies to feed 185,000 people for a month are still stuck in Turkey, hours after a ceasefire in Syria expired.

Syria’s fragile cease-fire started to unravel on Sunday with the first aerial attacks on rebel-held neighborhoods of Aleppo and a southern village that killed at least eight people, violations that came as tensions between the American and Russian brokers of the deal worsened following a deadly US strike on Syrian government forces.

Contents: Syria blocks humanitarian aid to Aleppo; Report: Turkey will build ‘residential cities’ in Syria buffer zone

The government of Syrian Dictator Bashar al-Assad is refusing to grant letters of permission to UN convoys to deliver aid to besieged cities, a move that violates the U.S.-Russian brokered ceasefire, according to the UN special envoy for Syria.

Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad celebrated the Muslim Eid holiday with a visit to the recently recaptured Damascus suburb of Darayya, where he celebrated that Western-backed rebels, and their patrons, were “sad and vanquished” and vowed to return “true freedom” to the town.

A cease-fire brokered by the US and Russia brought calm across much of Syria on Tuesday as residents of the northern city of Aleppo awaited an expected aid shipment.

The Syrian air defense system fired at Israeli war planes making a cross-border incursion on Tuesday was the result of Iranian pressure, an Arab intelligence official said.

Contents: As Syria ceasefire begins, Bashar al-Assad quickly rejects it; Confusion grows over role of al-Nusra Front in US-Russia peace plan

A Syria ceasefire billed as the “last chance” for peace appeared to be holding on its first full day Tuesday, with residents across the country reporting a quiet night and anxious for aid.

A ceasefire in Syria brokered by Russia and the United States is due to begin at sundown Monday, after scores of civilians were killed in a bloody weekend of strikes.

Contents: Kyrgyzstan’s World Nomad Games commemorate lifestyle of Genghis Khan; Syria’s civilians fear worse violence from US-Russia ‘ceasefire’ agreement; Generational theory: Bashar al-Assad’s miscalculation

A day of intense airstrikes Saturday on and around the northern city of Aleppo killed at least 45 people, according to opposition activists.

AMMAN- The top military commander of the militant group Jabhat Fateh al Sham, the former al Qaeda offshoot in Syria, was killed in an aerial raid that targeted a meeting of the group’s leaders, both the group and rebel sources said on Thursday.

In an article chiding Libertarian Party presidential nominee Gary Johnson for “a surprising lack of foreign policy knowledge” in admitting to not being familiar with the Syrian city of Aleppo, The New York Times was forced to issue two separate corrections after misidentifying the city as both the political capital of Syria and the capital of the Islamic State.

Thursday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” Libertarian Party presidential candidate Gary Johnson was caught dumbfounded when he was asked what he would do about Aleppo, the Syrian city at the heart of nation’s civil war. “What would you do if you

Russian and Iran-backed Syrian Dictator Bashar al-Assad is using warplanes to drop suspected chlorine-laden bombs on a nearby suburb, wounding at least 80 people, most of them women and children.

Contents: Syrian regime drops chlorine-laded barrel bomb on Aleppo market; From 2013: The history of how Syria’s Bashar al-Assad created ISIS

The Islamic State has a new magazine called Rumiyah, whose name alludes to the fall of the Roman Empire. The inaugural issue calls for “lone wolf” operatives to stage massacres at Australian tourist attractions, to avenge the death of terrorist Ezzit Raad.

Turkish troops and allied Syrian rebels expelled the Islamic State group from the last strip of territory it controlled along the Syrian-Turkish border on Sunday, effectively sealing the extremists’ self-styled caliphate off from the outside world, Turkey’s prime minister and a Syrian opposition group reported.

Turkey and its rebel allies opened a new line of attack in northern Syria on Saturday, as Turkish tanks rolled across the border and Syrian fighters swept in from the west to take villages held by the Islamic State militant group (ISIS).

Contents: Turkey sends more tanks into Syria in ‘New Phase’ of military action; Syrian rebels capture 14 villages near Hama in four days; Bashar al-Assad’s Syrian army once again close to collapse