Dozens of people were killed in a day-long battle between Syrian rebels and government forces in western Aleppo that was still going on intermittently on Wednesday, with rebels saying they were forced to retreat by heavy aerial bombing.
In Berlin, Syrian opposition figure Riad Hijab, speaking before talks with the German and French foreign ministers and the U.N.’s Syria envoy, said a general ceasefire was needed across Syria, rather than one limited to specific areas.
The current formula is not working, said Hijab, adding that the opposition had reached a dead end with Assad in peace talks. “There needs to be an agreement according to U.N. Security Council Resolution 2268 that includes all Syrian areas where moderate opposition exists,” he said.
A rebel attack in and around the Jamiyat al-Zahraa area of western Aleppo had threatened the army’s defensive lines around government-held areas of a city at the epicenter of a recent escalation in the five-year-old civil war.
In Geneva, a senior United Nations humanitarian official said the Syrian government was refusing U.N. demands to deliver aid to hundreds of thousands of civilians trapped by the fighting, including many in Aleppo.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said dozens had been killed on both sides in what it described as the most intense battle in the area in a year. Government forces were reinforced by allies from Lebanon’s Hezbollah, it said.
A rebel fighter said about 40 government fighters had been killed, while rebel losses stood at 10 dead.
Rebel sources said insurgents had at one point captured a strategic location known as Family House, but later lost it after the government side brought in reinforcements.
A rebel source said sustained air strikes on insurgents arrayed along the fringes of government-held Jamiyat al Zahraa had forced their retreat.
“The air force is the only weapon that exhausts us, especially (the use of) barrel bombing,” said Mohammad al Sulaiman, a field commander from the Free Syrian Army’s Liwa Fursan al Haq brigade.
Rebels said jets believed to be both Russian and Syrian continued to pound their positions near Jamiyat al Zahraa. Other air and artillery strikes hit rebel emplacements around the Castello highway, the main supply route into rebel-held Aleppo.

MOSTLY CIVILIAN CASUALTIES IN ALEPPO

Most of the people killed in Aleppo in the last few weeks have been civilians. The Observatory said 279 civilians had been killed in Aleppo by bombardment since April 22 – 155 of them in opposition-held areas.
Russia turned the tide of the war in Bashar al-Assad’s favor with a campaign of heavy aerial bombing launched last September, while the United States and some allies have provided limited support to non-Islamist rebel forces.
The military escalation in Aleppo wrecked the first major ceasefire of the war, sponsored by Washington and Moscow, which had held since February.
On Wednesday, Russia blamed the United States and an upsurge in violence by militants for a failure to extend a ceasefire plan to Aleppo the previous day.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Tuesday that the deal covering Aleppo was close and that the Russian and U.S. militaries might announce a decision “in the coming hours”. But such a local truce, also known as “a regime of calm,” never materialized.
Russian news agencies quoted Defence Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov as saying Russian and U.S. military officers were holding “active consultations” with the Assad government and “moderate opposition” on how to salvage the truce plan.

Source: Reuters, 4 May 2016