At least 30 civilians were killed on Saturday in regime and rebel bombardment of areas across Syria, threatening an eight-week-old truce at a time when peace talks are stalled in Geneva, Switzerland.
The head of a Britain-based monitoring group said the escalating violence meant a ceasefire between the regime and non-extremist rebels, in place since late February, had effectively collapsed.
The truce brokered by Russia and the US had raised hopes that UN-backed talks in Geneva this month would lead to a solution to the five-year conflict.
Photo: AFP
However, the negotiations due to continue until Wednesday have faltered after Syria’s main opposition group last week suspended its official participation in the talks.
Twelve civilians were killed on Saturday in an airstrike on the northern metropolis of Aleppo, a local civil defense official said.
State news agency SANA said three civilians were killed and 17 wounded in shelling by rebels of government-held areas of Aleppo.
The Syrian Human Rights Observatory said 13 others died in shelling of the rebel-held town of Douma, east of Damascus, while two men were killed in regime airstrikes on Talbiseh in central Homs Governorate.
The barrage of airstrikes on Aleppo targeted several neighborhoods, including the heavily populated Bustan al-Qasr district, a correspondent in the city said.
The deadliest raid was on the Tariq al-Bab neighborhood on the eastern edges of the city. A civil defense volunteer was seen carrying a screaming woman down a ladder from a damaged building in the neighborhood, as a pickup truck removed the remains of a victim’s body.
Another volunteer operating a crane brought down a young man cradling a baby from an upper level.
It was the second day of deadly strikes on Aleppo, after 25 civilians were killed and another 40 wounded in airstrikes on Friday.
Once Syria’s commercial hub, the northern metropolis has been divided by government control in the west and opposition groups in the east.
“The ceasefire ended when the first bomb hit the city,” civil defense volunteer Muhammed Mashhad said.
“The regime is intensifying its airstrikes, which have reached around 20 a day,” the 42-year-old said.
“This regime is criminal and doesn’t understand the language of political negotiations. All it gets is bombing, killing and destruction,” he added.
In the rebel-held town of Douma, 13 people — including three women and two children — were killed in government shelling on the city, the observatory said, adding all the dead were civilians.
Douma lies in the Eastern Ghouta opposition bastion, where the Jaysh al-Islam rebel group — also party to the truce deal — is dominant.
The ceasefire deal saw Syria’s government and non-extremist opposition agree to halt attacks while pursuing peace talks.
Violence dropped across the country, including in Aleppo, where residents cautiously began shopping in open-air markets and taking their children to parks.
However, observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman on Saturday said that the truce had effectively collapsed.
“Most of the areas that were under the ceasefire are now seeing fighting again,” he said.
US President Barack Obama and UN special envoy to Syria Staffan de Mistura on Friday said the ceasefire was in grave peril.
Syria’s main opposition coalition High Negotiations Committee last week halted its formal participation in the Geneva talks, which started on April 13.
However, De Mistura said members of his team had continued to meet remaining committee members at their Geneva hotel.
In Syria itself, regime officials and Kurdish representatives on Saturday met for a second day of talks aimed at ending deadly clashes in the northeastern city of al-Qamishli.
A truce document agreed to on Saturday and released yesterday said that regional Kurdish security forces would keep territory in the city taken from government forces, with both sides to release prisoners taken during the clashes.
Additional reporting by Reuters
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