UN Syria envoy warns time 'running out' for east Aleppo

The UN's Syria envoy warned Sunday that time was "running out" for eastern Aleppo as he expressed international outrage over a government bombing campaign of rebel-held parts of the city.

"We are running out of time, we are running against time," Staffan de Mistura said after talks in Damascus with Foreign Minister Walid Muallem.

The UN envoy said concern was running high among aid agencies that "instead of a humanitarian or a political initiative" there would be "an acceleration of military activities" in eastern Aleppo and elsewhere in Syria.

De Mistura said he discussed the escalating violence in Aleppo, where government forces last Tuesday began a bid to retake the eastern rebel-held side of the city using air strikes, barrel bombs and artillery.

Dozens of people have been killed in the onslaught, most of them civilians, a monitor has said, and many have been wounded, overwhelming rescue workers in a city where hospitals have also been hit.

On Sunday, rebels retaliated with a barrage of rockets into government-held western Aleppo, killing at least eight children at a school, state media said.

De Mistura said he opened his talks with Muallem by "expressing serious concern and indeed shared the general international outrage for the news coming from eastern Aleppo".

"By Christmas... due to military intensification, you will have the virtual collapse of what is left in eastern Aleppo; you may have 200,000 people moving towards Turkey - that would be a humanitarian catastrophe," he warned.

The envoy also confirmed that Syria's government had rejected a truce proposal that would have allowed the opposition to administer the eastern part of the city.

'Horrific attacks'

In the east of the city, an AFP journalist said streets were deserted, with only ambulances and rescue workers moving through battered neighbourhoods.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitor of the war, said on Sunday that 54 people had been killed in the previous 24 hours, most of them civilians.

That brought to 103 the number of civilians killed, including 17 children, since the regime renewed its bombardment of Aleppo, it said.

The Observatory also reported heavy fighting between government forces and rebels as the army sought to gain ground in the Bustan al-Basha and Sheikh Saeed neighbourhoods of the rebel-controlled east.

More than 300,000 people have been killed in Syria since the conflict began with anti-government protests in March 2011. Successive international attempts to find a peaceful resolution to the war have failed.

The government assault has forced the closure of hospitals and schools, destroyed rescue worker facilities, and left residents cowering in their homes.

US National Security Advisor Susan Rice said Washington condemned "in the strongest terms these horrific attacks against medical infrastructure and humanitarian aid workers".

"The Syrian regime and its allies, Russia in particular, bears responsibility for the immediate and long-term consequences these actions have caused in Syria and beyond."

Moscow began a military intervention in support of President Bashar al-Assad's government last year.

It says it is not involved in the current assault on Aleppo, concentrating its firepower on opposition and militant forces in neighbouring Idlib province instead.

But Damascus and its allies have made clear they want rebels expelled from eastern Aleppo, which fell from regime control in mid-2012.

Family of six killed

More than 250,000 people remain in the east of the city, which has been sealed off since government forces surrounded it in mid-July.

No aid has entered east Aleppo since then, and the government siege has led to food and fuel shortages, while sustained bombardment has forced schools and hospitals to close.

In mid-October, Russia said it was halting its strikes on Aleppo, and organised a series of brief ceasefires intended to encourage civilians and surrendering rebels to evacuate the east.

But few did so, and the UN said the short windows of opportunity were insufficient for it to secure security guarantees for aid deliveries or evacuations.

The renewed bombing has particularly affected medical and rescue facilities in the east, with shelling on Friday destroying one of the last hospitals in rebel-held Aleppo.

Staff were also forced to evacuate the east's only children's hospital because of repeated attacks.

Among those killed in the overnight bombing Sunday were a couple and their four children, who died in a barrel bomb attack in the Sakhur neighbourhood, the Observatory said. 

Activists circulated footage which they said showed the children, in which the four siblings lay lifeless on a stone floor, one a little girl with her hair in pigtails and wearing a blue jumper with a cartoon animal on it.