Besieged civilians despair as Assad army pounds Aleppo

The Syrian Army advanced in Aleppo on Friday, pounding the rebel-held east with strikes that killed dozens and added to the despair for more than 250,000 civilians under siege.

Ten days into the Syrian government's renewed bid to recapture all of battered second city Aleppo, regime bombardment has killed nearly 190 civilians and left residents desperate for respite.
The regime is hoping to score its most important victory yet of the five-year civil war, dealing a potentially decisive blow to the rebels by recapturing eastern neighborhoods they overran in 2012.
Civilians in the east have been under siege by the army since July, with food and fuel supplies dwindling and international aid completely exhausted.
On Thursday alone, 32 civilians were killed in airstrikes and artillery fire on eastern neighborhoods, among them five children, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
“I'm terrified by the army's advance and the increasing bombardment,” said Abu Raed, a father-of-four living in Fardos neighborhood. “There's no safe place for me and my family.”
The Observatory said the army now controlled more than 60 percent of the strategic Masaken Hanano district and was pushing on.
Masaken Hanano is east Aleppo's largest district and its capture would cut the rebel-held sector in two.
The advances have been accompanied by relentless air and artillery bombardment, with medical staff in the east accusing the army of dropping barrel bombs filled with chlorine gas.
Retaliatory rocket fire by the rebels has killed at least 18 civilians in the government-held west, 10 of them children, according to the Observatory.
On Thursday night, rescue workers in several parts of the east battled to extricate civilians trapped under the rubble of bombed buildings.
In Bab Al-Nayrab, an AFP cameraman saw rescuers battle for more than an hour to pull out a seriously wounded boy. The lower part of his body was trapped and the back of his head badly gashed.
He cried out “father, father,” as the rescuers used pickaxes to break up the concrete surrounding him.
The desperate conditions have prompted some civilians to flee.
On the ground, residents expressed despair.
“Living under these circumstances is unbearable,” said 43-year-old Mohammed Haj Hussein, in Tariq Al-Bab district.
“There's no work, there's no food, and the bombing is incessant ... I want to get out of here by any means possible.”
In Bab Al-Nayrab district, Abu Hussein said: “I don't know what the UN is waiting for. Why don't they at least evacuate the children and women?” The UN says it has a plan to deliver aid to Aleppo and evacuate the sick and wounded, which rebel factions have approved.
But Damascus has yet to agree, and additional guarantees are needed from Moscow, UN officials say.
On Thursday, the head of the UN-backed humanitarian taskforce for Syria, Jan Egeland, warned there was no plan B to help civilians in east Aleppo.
“In many ways plan B is that people starve, and can we allow that to happen? No we cannot,” he said.
Lebanese special forces captured 11 members of Daesh, including a local commander, in an operation Friday near the border with Syria, the military said in a statement.
The army said the operation near the border town of Arsal targeted a Daesh center. It said the local Daesh commander in the town, Ahmad Youssef Amoun, was captured after being seriously wounded. No troops were hurt, it said.
Hundreds of Daesh fighters are based in the area along the Lebanon-Syria border from where they launch attacks inside Lebanon.
Photographs said to be of Amoun and posted on local media websites showed a young man with a thick black beard lying on a hospital bed, a blood-stained white sheet covering most of his body.
Lebanon's new President, Michel Aoun, less than a month in office, praised the “pre-emptive security operation,” according to a presidential statement.
“Such special operations strengthen stability and limit terrorist schemes,” Aoun was quoted as saying.
The military said Amoun was behind several explosions that hit Lebanon recently, including the predominantly Shiite southern suburbs of Beirut, and took part in attacks against army positions in border areas.
Friday's operation came two months after Lebanese commandos detained a Daesh commander, Imad Yassin, in an operation in the Palestinian refugee camp of Ein El-Helweh, near the southern city of Sidon.
Separately, a Turkish soldier was killed and five wounded in clashes with Daesh in northern Syria, the military said on Friday, as Turkish-backed rebels pressed an offensive to take the city of Al-Bab from the radical group. The latest casualties bring the number of Turkish soldiers killed in Syria to 17 since Ankara launched a cross-border incursion on Aug. 24 to try to push Daesh and Kurdish fighters from the border, according to Turkish media.
The Turkish military said four Syrian rebels had been killed and 25 wounded in clashes in the 24 hours to Friday morning. Turkish fighter jets were continuing to strike Daesh targets near Al-Bab, it said.
The advance by the largely Turkmen and Arab rebels towards Al-Bab, the last urban stronghold of Daesh in the northern Aleppo countryside, potentially pits them against Kurdish fighters and Syrian government forces.

Source: Arab News