Activists, Russia say Aleppo cease-fire broken
Opposition activists in Syria say bombing resumed Wednesday in the remaining rebel-held part of eastern Aleppo, breaking a cease-fire deal that was agreed hours earlier, according to media reports.
Rebels reached an agreement to evacuate in an effective surrender on Tuesday, as Russia declared all military action had stopped and the Syrian government had assumed control of the former rebel enclave, the Associated Press reported.
Rebels and civilians were expected to leave the last rebel stronghold under the deal, which was brokered by Russia and Turkey. Hours later, activists said rebel-held neighborhoods were shelled, CNN reported.
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Activist Mahmoud Raslan said airstrikes resumed over the rebel-held district of Ansari on Wednesday, the Telegraph reported.
He said warplanes "began to strike as if there's no such thing as a cease-fire or evacuation of civilians," the newspaper said.
The Russian Defense Ministry said rebels broke the agreement and “resumed the hostilities” at dawn. It said rebels fired at a convoy of rebels who agreed to be evacuated to the northwestern city of Idlib that was due to leave early Wednesday. Russia and Iran are allies of the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad.
Russia Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Wednesday that calls for a cease-fire were only aimed at allowing "militants to take breath."
"The demands of silence each time are aimed at only one thing: so that the militants take breath, reinforce themselves and get new weapons and ammunition," he said, according to the state-owned TASS news agency.
Meanwhile Brigadier Gen. Hossein Dehqan, Iran's defense minister, congratulated Syria "on the latest victory of the Syrian army in liberating the city of Aleppo," the official Islamic Republic News Agency reported.
Aby Zayd, a legal adviser to Syrian opposition groups, told the AP Wednesday that Iranian militias and the Shiite Islamist group Hezbollah were shelling four opposition-held neighborhoods. He said it was “clear that the Russians can’t get Iran to abide by the deal," and that new Iranian demands include recovering the remains of Iranian fighters killed in Aleppo and for Iranian hostages held in Idlib to be released.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a monitoring group based in the United Kingdom, said that buses due to evacuate 150 civilians lay idle more than two hours after the evacuation was due to begin. The buses later returned to their depots with no passengers, according to media reports.
On Tuesday, Rupert Colville, a spokesman for the U.N. human rights office, told reporters in Geneva that the office received reports that pro-government forces entering former rebel enclaves in eastern Aleppo killed at least 82 civilians, including 11 women and 13 children.
"We're filled with the deepest foreboding for those who remain in this last hellish corner," Colville said.
Bashar al-Jaafari, Syria’s Permanent Representative to the U.N., told an emergency Security Council meeting Tuesday that the Syrian government "is innocent of the U.S. and western accusations that it has committed crimes in Aleppo," the official Syrian Arab News Agency reported.
Staffan de Mistura, the U.N. envoy for Syria, told reporters after the Security Council meeting that armed groups were still estimated to control about 2 square miles in eastern Aleppo. He said the U.N.’s main concern is the up to 50,000 civilians still believed to be in that part of the city, the AP reported.