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150,000 in Aleppo ‘condemned to death’

Government troops and allied militiamen have been advancing swiftly into the once rebel-controlled eastern Aleppo enclave of al-Mashhad.

Government troops and allied militiamen have been advancing swiftly into the once rebel-controlled eastern Aleppo enclave of al-Mashhad. Photo: Wissam Zarqa, via AP

More than 800 people have been killed and between 3000 and 3500 have been wounded in Syria’s besieged eastern Aleppo in the past 26 days.

The president of the Aleppo local councils says the remaining trapped civilians await an effective death sentence.

“Today 150,000 people are threatened with extermination.

“We are calling for a halt to the bombing and guarantees of safe passage of all,” Brita Haji Hassan said on Thursday during a trip to Geneva, where he will meet UN Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura.

After he made the call, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the Syrian army has stopped active military operations in eastern Aleppo because a large effort to remove civilians from the city was under way.

The RIA news agency reported Lavrov as saying it had been agreed that Russian and US military experts would meet in Geneva on Saturday to discuss the situation in Aleppo.

Tawfik Chamaa, a representative of the Union of Syrian Medical Relief Organisations (UOSSM), said 1500 people needed medical evacuation, but any evacuation should have international observers to prevent them being “executed or diverted on the way to hospital”.

Earlier on Thursday UN Syria humanitarian advisor Jan Egeland said the United States and Russia are “poles apart” in trying to agree on terms for evacuations from besieged east Aleppo.

Five months of negotiations over aid plans had all failed and produced “nothing”, he said on Thursday, and it was up to the United States and Russia to pull together to agree an evacuation of the besieged sector, which the UN has said may hold 8000 fighters among more than 200,000 civilians.

Russia was no longer promising to pause fighting to allow people to leave, but their suggestion of humanitarian corridors was not worth the name without a ceasefire, he told reporters.

A clutch of world leaders has released a statement calling for an immediate ceasefire in Aleppo, and demanding the Syrian regime agree to a UN peace plan.  Russia has blocked UN Security Council efforts to resolve the issue.

Meanwhile the seven year old girl whose tweeting from within the city drew the attention of JK Rowling, Bana Alabed, is back on social media after disappearing for a while.

Bana’s mother Fatemah manages her Twitter account, featuring the family’s efforts to survive in a war zone.

Earlier this week the account appeared to have been deleted after a tweet saying: “We are sure the army is capturing us now. We will see each other another day dear world. Bye.”

Her latest message says the family’s home is under fire.

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