The United Nations Security Council is to meet Sunday to discuss the devastating Syrian government offensive that has raged since a shaky ceasefire deal fell apart last week.
The session, to begin at 11 a.m. ET, was requested by the United States, Britain and France in the wake of the furious Syrian assault to retake rebel-held parts of eastern Aleppo in recent days, a UN source confirmed to CNN.
The opposition says the violence has been even more intense than before the ceasefire took hold.
Hundreds of airstrikes have pummeled the city since the Syrian government, backed by Russia, announced a renewed, “comprehensive” offensive on Thursday following the collapse of the short-lived ceasefire. The offensive, involving ground troops as well as air power, has targeted rebel positions across the country, inflicting “heavy losses” on them, the state-run Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) reported.
Residents in the opposition-held east of Aleppo, where more than 250,000 civilians are besieged by government forces, reported ongoing barrel bomb attacks Sunday.
On Saturday, Syrian government troops and supporting militia made their first major ground advance of the assault on Aleppo, seizing control of the Handarat Palestinian refugee camp on the city’s northeastern outskirts, while warplanes bombarded the opposition-held east, according to state-run SANA.
Rebels then launched a counter-offensive to try to retake the area, according to the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR). There were conflicting reports as to the outcome of the fighting.
Western foreign minsters condemn assault
The foreign ministers of the United States, France, Germany, the UK and Italy, along with the High Representative of the EU, released a statement late Saturday condemning the ongoing offensive on eastern Aleppo as “unacceptable.”
The statement said it was up to Russia to prove it was “willing and able to take extraordinary steps to salvage diplomatic efforts to restore a cessation of hostilities” on the ground, and condemned the Syrian government’s “public denunciation” of the ceasefire.
Syria’s military declared the ceasefire over on Monday, after a strike by US-led coalition warplanes on a Syrian army post, which killed dozens of troops. The US military did not dispute the strike, but characterized it as “unintentional” and relayed its “regret” to Syria through Russia, saying the intended target had been ISIS.
Shortly after the ceasefire ended Monday, a UN-Syrian Arab Red Crescent aid convoy was hit in an airstrike, killing about 20 people. US officials blamed Russia, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s critical ally, while Moscow denied that Russian or Syrian warplanes were responsible.
In a statement Saturday, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon condemned the “chilling military escalation in the city of Aleppo, which is facing the most sustained and intense bombardment since the start of the Syrian conflict.”
He said that the Syrian government’s use of airstrikes, incendiary weapons and bunker-buster bombs in densely populated areas may amount to war crimes.
Gerges: ‘Deficit of trust’
The US and Russia, who brokered the shattered ceasefire, have continued talks about how to revive the truce.
But both have accused the other of failing to adequately rein in forces under their influence on the ground — rebels, in the case of the United States, and the Syrian government, in Russia’s case. Russia stresses that rooting out terrorist groups is key to securing peace, while the US has blamed the Syrian government for the ceasefire’s failure, and called for military aircraft to be grounded.
Fawaz Gerges, professor of International Relations at the London School of Economics, said there was a “deficit of trust” between the two powers that complicated efforts to restore the ceasefire.
Russia had deployed more military resources into the Syrian war than the United States, for whom the conflict was less of a strategic consideration, giving Russia and its Syrian ally the upper hand on the battlefield, he said.
He said he believed the latest heavy offensive was an attempt to win battlefield gains that could strengthen Syria and Russia’s hands at the next round of talks.
“It’s about maximizing the bargaining position of Russia and Assad,” he said, adding that Moscow likely hoped to use its leverage in the conflict to win broader concessions from the United States, such as in relation to Ukraine and other disputes.