Jets pound Aleppo

Russia, Iran urged to cease ‘dead-end strategy’

AMMAN: Warplanes bombed a strategic camp on the northern edge of Aleppo on Sunday as Syrian government and rebel forces battled for control of the city in a Russian-backed offensive that appears to have buried any hope for diplomacy.

The United Nations Security Council will meet at 11 am (1500 GMT) to discuss the sharp escalation in violence since a ceasefire collapsed last week.

But the rebels said any peace process would be futile unless "scorched earth bombing" by Russian-backed government forces stopped immediately.

Capturing the rebel-held half of Syria´s largest city, where more than 250,000 civilians are trapped, would be the biggest victory of the civil war for President Bashar al-Assad´s forces.

They have achieved their strongest position in years thanks to Russian and Iranian support and launched a fresh offensive for a decisive battlefield victory on Thursday.

In the first major advance, they seized control of the Handarat Palestinian refugee camp, north of Aleppo.

Rebels counter attacked and said on Sunday they had retaken the camp before the bombing started.

"We retook the camp, but the regime burnt it with phosphorous bombs," said Abu al-Hassanien, a commander in a rebel operations room that includes the main brigades fighting to repel the army assault.

The army, which is being helped by Iranian-backed militias, Lebanon´s Hizbullah militant group and a Palestinian militia, acknowledged rebels had retaken Handarat.

"The Syrian army is targeting the armed groups´ positions in Handarat camp," a military source was quoted on state media as saying.

Planes also continued to pound residential areas on Sunday, flattening buildings, rebels and residents said.

They say air strikes have intensified, with more powerful weapons, since the new offensive began.

"The Assad regime and with direct participation of its ally Russia and Iranian militias has escalated its criminal and vicious attack on our people in Aleppo employing a scorched earth policy to destroy the city and uproot its people," a statement signed by 30 mainstream rebel groups said on Sunday.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a monitoring group, said at least 45 people, among them 10 children, were killed in eastern Aleppo on Saturday.

The army says it is targeting only militants.

Hundreds of thousands of people have been killed in the civil war and 11 million driven from their homes.

Russia and the United States agreed on Sept 9 a deal to put the peace process back on track.

It included a nationwide truce and improved humanitarian aid access but it collapsed when an aid convoy was bombed killing some 20 people.

US Secretary of State John Kerry, who hammered out the truce in months of intensive diplomacy, pleaded with Russia to halt air strikes.

In a meeting on Saturday in Boston, Kerry and his counterparts from the EU, Britain, Germany, Italy and France said Russia should "take extraordinary steps to restore the credibility of our efforts, including by halting the indiscriminate bombing by the Syrian regime of its own people.

"British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said Russia was guilty of prolonging the war in Syria and may have committed war crimes by targeting an aid convoy.

"When it comes to instances such as the bombing of aid targets in Aleppo, we should be looking at whether or not that targeting is done in the knowledge that those are wholly innocent civilian targets, that is a war crime," he said in a BBC interview aired on Sunday.

Meanwhile, French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said on Sunday Russia and Iran would become accomplices in war crimes if they continued to prolong the war in Syria.

Describing Russia and Iran as supporters of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Ayrault called on them "to take their responsibility by stopping this strategy that leads to a dead-end."

"Otherwise, Russia and Iran will become accomplices of the war crimes committed in Aleppo," the minister said in a written statement with reference to the bombings that struck the Syrian city and killed scores of people.