Save the Children yesterday hit out at the “moral outrage” of the mounting deaths and suffering of children in the battleground Syrian city of Aleppo.
The charity said that medics across northwest Syria were looking to fortify hospitals after a wave of attacks in rebel-held east Aleppo left facilities struggling to care for injured children.
Regime forces have been waging a ferocious assault on east Aleppo since Tuesday last week, with the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights saying more than 140 civilians have been killed, 19 of them children.
The renewed fighting comes amid international concern for the fate of more than 250,000 civilians trapped in besieged rebel-held areas of the northern city.
Save the Children also condemned a rebel attack on west Aleppo on Sunday that killed at least eight children.
It said among those killed at the weekend was an education worker at a school it supports in east Aleppo, who was found buried in rubble along with her baby son.
Classes at 13 such schools in east Aleppo had been suspended as shelling intensified, Save the Children said.
It said the deadly rebel attack on the school in the west of the city showed “there is no safe place for children in this conflict.”
“Children and aid workers are being bombarded by missiles whilst they are sitting at their desks in schools and seeking treatment in hospitals, which are also under attack,” Save the Children Syria director Sonia Khush said.
“The very places they should feel safest have become deadly,” she said. “It is a moral outrage that the death toll of Aleppo’s children continues to grow and seems only set to get worse, whilst so little action is being taken to end the bombing and hold warring parties accountable for these attacks on civilians.”
Save the Children called for an internationally monitored ceasefire to bring humanitarian relief into east Aleppo, and evacuate the sick and wounded.
It said the UN and opposition groups had already agreed on access for an aid convoy which could go ahead once all sides agree to a ceasefire.
“Parties to the conflict must come together to agree an immediate ceasefire, and to evacuate civilian casualties and get life-saving aid into the area,” it said.
UN Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura on Sunday was rebuffed in Damascus on a truce proposal that would allow the opposition to administer the city’s east.
Aleppo was once the nation’s economic powerhouse, but it has been ravaged by the brutal war across Syria that has killed 300,000 people since it began with anti-government protests in March 2011.
Four people jailed in the landmark Hong Kong national security trial of "47 democrats" accused of conspiracy to commit subversion were freed today after more than four years behind bars, the second group to be released in a month. Among those freed was long-time political and LGBTQ activist Jimmy Sham (岑子杰), who also led one of Hong Kong’s largest pro-democracy groups, the Civil Human Rights Front, which disbanded in 2021. "Let me spend some time with my family," Sham said after arriving at his home in the Kowloon district of Jordan. "I don’t know how to plan ahead because, to me, it feels
Polish presidential candidates offered different visions of Poland and its relations with Ukraine in a televised debate ahead of next week’s run-off, which remains on a knife-edge. During a head-to-head debate lasting two hours, centrist Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski, from Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s governing pro-European coalition, faced the Eurosceptic historian Karol Nawrocki, backed by the right-wing populist Law and Justice party (PiS). The two candidates, who qualified for the second round after coming in the top two places in the first vote on Sunday last week, clashed over Poland’s relations with Ukraine, EU policy and the track records of their
‘A THREAT’: Guyanese President Irfan Ali called on Venezuela to follow international court rulings over the region, whose border Guyana says was ratified back in 1899 Misael Zapara said he would vote in Venezuela’s first elections yesterday for the territory of Essequibo, despite living more than 100km away from the oil-rich Guyana-administered region. Both countries lay claim to Essequibo, which makes up two-thirds of Guyana’s territory and is home to 125,000 of its 800,000 citizens. Guyana has administered the region for decades. The centuries-old dispute has intensified since ExxonMobil discovered massive offshore oil deposits a decade ago, giving Guyana the largest crude oil reserves per capita in the world. Venezuela would elect a governor, eight National Assembly deputies and regional councilors in a newly created constituency for the 160,000
North Korea has detained another official over last week’s failed launch of a warship, which damaged the naval destroyer, state media reported yesterday. Pyongyang announced “a serious accident” at Wednesday last week’s launch ceremony, which crushed sections of the bottom of the new destroyer. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un called the mishap a “criminal act caused by absolute carelessness.” Ri Hyong-son, vice department director of the Munitions Industry Department of the Party Central Committee, was summoned and detained on Sunday, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported. He was “greatly responsible for the occurrence of the serious accident,” it said. Ri is the fourth person
RSS