UN Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura said yesterday that he had failed to get the agreement of government authorities on a plan to improve the humanitarian situation in besieged eastern Aleppo.
De Mistura, speaking after a meeting in Damascus with Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem, said he had presented a four-point plan involving medical and food aid supplies, the evacuation of 200 injured or disabled civilians and allowing medical staff to rotate in and out of the besieged enclave.
He said he had also proposed allowing militant fighters, a minority among the rebel defenders of the enclave, to leave the area, and the government recognising the opposition city council.
The envoy said that rebel groups operating in the enclave had agreed in principle to the humanitarian proposals.
Al-Moallem earlier said he had rejected a proposal from de Mistura to give self-administration to the opposition section of eastern Aleppo.
De Mistura noted al-Moallem’s denial that government forces had shelled any hospitals, and said he had recommended the establishment of a fact-finding committee on the issue.
All the remaining hospitals in eastern Aleppo have been hit in air strikes recently, leaving the enclave without any facilities to deal with serious injuries from shelling and air strikes, according to local medical workers.
The abortive talks in Damascus came as a monitoring group reported 12 children and eight adult civilians killed in tit-for-tat shelling in the divided northern city.
Eight children were killed after shells hit a school in the district of al-Furqan in the western part of Aleppo, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. Two other civilians were killed by shells in the neighbourhood of al-Sabil in western Aleppo, the watchdog added.
Earlier, six members of the same family died when regime helicopters indiscriminately dropped explosive-packed barrels on the eastern rebel-held neighbourhood of al-Sakhour. The victims included four children, the Observatory said.
Four more civilians were killed in bombardments on the districts of Jabal Badru and al-Shaar in opposition eastern Aleppo, according to the Britain-based watchdog, which relies on a network of activists inside war-torn Syria.
The Syrian government has intensified its air and artillery attacks on eastern Aleppo since Tuesday in an attempt to dislodge opposition fighters from the area.
Some local activists said that this week’s regime attacks were supported by air power from its Russian allies, a claim that Moscow has denied.
An estimated 300,000 people are under a government siege on the eastern part of Aleppo, where residents report declining or disrupted supplies of basic necessities, including food, water, electricity and medicine.