Aleppo ablaze in worst attacks in months as Syrian army launches major offensive
Syria's army announced the launch of an offensive to retake the rebel-held east of the battleground city of Aleppo, warning residents to keep away from posts held by anti-government fighters.
"The military operations command announces the start of operations in eastern districts of the city and calls on residents to stay away from the positions of terrorist groups," it said on Thursday in a statement carried by state news agency SANA, using the government's term for the opposition.
The army also said it would take "all measures to facilitate the reception" of civilians and that those who arrive at its checkpoints will not be arrested.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said it was "a large-scale land offensive supported by Russian air strikes aimed at taking bit by bit the eastern sector of Aleppo and emptying it of its residents".
The initial targets were the Amiriyah, Sukari and Sheikh Said sectors, to the south, said the monitoring group's head, Rami Abdel Rahman.
Late on Thursday, intense air raids battered the areas.
Warplanes mounted the heaviest air strikes in months overnight against the rebel-held districts of Aleppo, opposition officials and activists said, just hours after the US called for the Syrian air force to be grounded to revitalise a failed ceasefire.
The director of al-Quds hospital, Hamza al-Khatib, told Reuters on Thursday that 45 people were killed in the bombardments.
Fires were reported across the city, which pro-rebel activists said were caused by the Syrian government and its Russian ally dropping incendiary bombs.
Pro-government reports, however, suggested that missiles had struck a rebel ammunition dump.
An AFP correspondent in the city's east reported that his street was in flames after the pre-dawn strikes.
The attacks came hours after US Secretary of State John Kerry called for the grounding of the Syrian air force as a way to get a failed truce back on track.
Kerry and his Russian counterpart Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov later on Thursday convened a crisis meeting of governments with a stake in the Syrian civil war.
Ministers from the 23-nation International Syria Support Group gathered at a New York hotel for the second time in three days to seek a way to revive a plan to implement a ceasefire that collapsed this week.
At a UN Security Council meeting on Wednesday, an angry Kerry said the bombing of an aid convoy on Monday in Aleppo, which killed 20 people, raised "profound doubt" about whether Russia and its Syrian ally were committed to upholding a ceasefire.
In an address to the meeting, Lavrov said there would be "no more unilateral pauses" by Syrian government forces. He said opposition fighters had previously used such ceasefires to regroup.
He insisted that all sides must rein in rebel groups on the ground to ensure they comply with the ceasefire and said a list of militant groups not covered by the truce should be reviewed.
Rebel mortar fire hit government-held districts in the west, the Observatory group said. It had no immediate word on any casualties.
Air strikes on east Aleppo on Wednesday killed 12 civilians, two of them children, the highest death toll in the city since the collapse of a week-long ceasefire.
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