Hours after airstrikes killed 14 family members in Aleppo — including 10 children — Russia announced it will temporarily stop airstrikes on the rebel-held eastern part of the city.
Russia has helped bolster the Syrian regime’s airstrikes on rebel-held parts of Aleppo, Syria’s largest city and the site of a humanitarian catastrophe.
Gen. Sergey Rudskoy announced airstrikes will stop for eight hours Thursday, starting at 8 a.m.
He 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.”
Rudskoy’s statement came about the same time that EU foreign ministers called on Russia to “halt indiscriminate bombing by the Syrian regime.”
But there’s no promise the bloodshed won’t resume after that eight-hour break.
10 children killed in airstrikes Monday
Fourteen members of the same family — including two infants and eight other children — were killed Monday in airstrikes on Aleppo, according to the activist group Aleppo Media Center.
In recent days, hundreds of civilians have died amid the Syrian army’s renewed offensive on rebel-controlled parts of the city.
A video shows some of the children killed lying shoulder-to-shoulder on the side of a street, wrapped in white cloth. A man squats and kisses one of the infants on the forehead before carrying the bodies away.
Since Sunday, airstrikes have killed at least 45 people in two neighborhoods in Aleppo, the AMC said.
The death toll continued to climb after Moscow vetoed a United Nations Security Council resolution Saturday to stop the bombing 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 United States and United Kingdom have mulled potential economic sanctions against Syria and Russia due to the Aleppo crisis.
