[Breaking news update at 12:10 p.m. ET]
Russia will stop airstrikes on rebel-held eastern Aleppo for eight hours on Thursday, a top Russian Defense Ministry official said Monday.
Gen. Sergey Rudskoy also urged rebels to leave the city via two corridors to Idlib.
“These same corridors can be used to evacuate the sick and wounded,” Rudskoy said, according to Russian state-run media. “Six corridors will be opened for the passage of civilians.”
Russians have helped bolster the Syrian regime’s airstrikes on rebel-held parts of Aleppo.
Rudskoy’s statement came at about the same time that EU foreign ministers called on Russia to “halt indiscriminate bombing by the Syrian regime, restore a cessation of hostilities, ensure immediate and expanded humanitarian access and create the conditions for a credible and inclusive political transition.”
[Previous story, published at 6:35 a.m. ET]
The latest airstrikes on Aleppo Monday have taken a painful toll on one family in particular.
Fourteen members of the same family — including two infants and eight other children — were killed, according to the activist group Aleppo Media Center.
Since Sunday, airstrikes have killed at least 45 people in two neighborhoods in Aleppo, AMC said. In recent days, hundreds of civilian have died amid the Syrian army’s renewed offensive on rebel-controlled sections of eastern Aleppo.
More than 30 people were killed in airstrikes that hit the Al-Qaterji neighborhood Sunday night, both the AMC and the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
Monday morning another round of airstrikes killed 14 more people in the al-Marjah neighborhood, all from one family, according to the AMC.
Among them, a pair of six-week-old infants and an 8-year-old, AMC said.
The death toll continued to climb as Russians helped bolster the Syrian army’s air attack, after Moscow vetoed a United Nations Security Council resolution Saturday to halt the action in Aleppo and allow access for humanitarian aid.
As the strikes have continued, Western powers accused Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his supporters of war crimes.
Both the US and UK have mulled potential economic sanctions against Syria and Russia due to the Aleppo crisis.