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Syria / AFP
Russian and Syrian warplanes pounded rebel-held areas of divided second city Aleppo on Saturday as government forces closed in on the rebels’ sole remaining supply line, a monitoring group said.
An AFP correspondent in the rebel-held east of the city said the air strikes lasted throughout the night into the morning. Aleppo, which was Syria’s commercial and manufacturing hub before civil war broke out in 2011, has been a key battleground ever since rebels seized eastern neighbourhoods of the city the following year. A two-day truce brokered by Moscow and Washington earlier this month in a bid to rescue a wider ceasefire expired without renewal and Russia warned it would press ahead with it air campaign, saying the rebels had failed to deliver on promises to break ranks with Al-Qaeda loyalists.
The Russian strikes focused on the Castello Road, the only remaining route out of the rebel-held east of the city, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.