Ball of flame engulfs aid-starved Aleppo

A Syrian carries a baby after removing him from the rubble of a destroyed building following an air strike in Qatarji, in Aleppo, Syria. (Photo: AFP)

Huge blazes erupted in Aleppo after the Syrian city was rocked by fighting and airstrikes on Thursday ahead of last-ditch efforts by world powers to salvage a failed ceasefire.

An AFP correspondent in the eastern Bustan al-Qasr neighbourhood reported that his entire street was in flames following the pre-dawn strikes. Volunteer firefighters battled throughout the night to contain the blazes, which local activists at the Aleppo Media Centre said were caused by “incendiary phosphorous bombs”.

In footage posted by the group, a ball of flame shoots up over the city lighting up the skyline and sparking fires on the horizon.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said strikes on the rebel-held neighbourhoods of Bustan al-Qasr and Al-Kalasseh “led to massive fires” overnight.

Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman said they were “the most intense strikes in months” on those two districts. He said raids by Russian warplanes on Thursday killed 13 people, including three women, in the city. The United Nations (UN) said that the food aid for rebel-held east Aleppo, which has been stalled at the Syrian border since last week, will go bad in days and urged Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to clear the delivery.

“Forty trucks are sitting at the Turkish-Syrian border. The food will be expire on Monday,” the head of the UN humanitarian task force for Syria, Jan Egeland, told reporters in Geneva. “The drivers are sleeping at the border and they have done so now for now a week. So, please, President Assad, do your bit to enable us to get to eastern Aleppo and also the other besieged areas,” Egeland added in a direct appeal to Assad. The trucks entered a customs zone between the two countries on September 12 and 13. The UN had hoped to send them along the Castello Road into east Aleppo, militarily encircled since early July and where up to 250,000 people are in desperate need of life-saving supplies. As part of the now broken ceasefire pact agreed between the United States and Russia, the United Nations had expected assurances from Damascus that the Castello Road would be clear and safe.

The UN’s Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura charged the Assad government with breaking its word by not providing authorisation permits to visit at least five besieged areas.