Intense bombardment shook Aleppo on Friday, thunderously underscoring the failure of the latest diplomatic efforts to stem the carnage in Syria’s largest city.
Syria’s Russian-backed military pressed ahead with airstrikes and shelling aimed at Aleppo’s rebel-held eastern sector — an offensive whose start was announced by the government on Thursday even as senior diplomats were holding talks in New York aimed at reviving a cease-fire that collapsed earlier this week.
Activists described heavy explosions that rocked opposition-held neighborhoods overnight and into the morning hours, with targets including centers of a volunteer civil defense group known as the White Helmets.
Syrian state media quoted a military official as saying that the bombardment was the prelude to a planned ground offensive.
The surge of violence in recent days shattered a brief lull brought about by the U.S.- and Russian-brokered cease-fire, which took effect Sept. 12. Talks this week on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly in New York had been intended to shore up the truce and lay the groundwork for peace talks, but instead descended into mutual recriminations.
A tense meeting Thursday of the Syria Support Group, made up of senior European and Middle Eastern envoys, ended inconclusively, with a clearly frustrated Secretary of State John F. Kerry telling reporters afterward: “We can’t be the only ones trying to hold this door open.”
Russia and Syrian President Assad, in turn, have accused the United States of bringing about the collapse of the cease-fire.
As has been the pattern in more than five years of brutal warfare, civilians bore the brunt of the violence, huddling in homes that provided little shelter against what activists described as unrelenting strikes by warplanes and helicopters. Russian airpower has been a crucial factor in propping up the Assad regime.
The renewed conflict, including a strike on a U.N. aid convoy outside Aleppo on Monday night, has also blocked the delivery of most humanitarian supplies to opposition-held areas, though one convoy reached a besieged district outside Damascus on Thursday.
Aleppo, a onetime cultural treasure and commercial center, has become a crucible of suffering — but is still seen by both sides a strategic prize. If the government were able to regain control of the rebel-held eastern sector, it would mark the war’s most serious setback for the opposition.
More Syria talks were set later Friday in New York, but Russia and the United States appeared far apart on conditions for reviving the truce, let alone addressing the larger conflict.
Kerry has called for the grounding of aircraft over key aid routes, a proposal that Moscow has described as unworkable.
Bulos reported from Baghdad, King from Washington.
