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 high ground in a Russian-backed offensive that has left Washington’s Syria policy in tatters.
Planes also continued to pound residential parts of the town, flattening buildings, rebels and residents said. More than 250,000 civilians are trapped in the besieged opposition sector and there is growing concern about the escalation in violence since a ceasefire, announced just two weeks ago, unravelled.
In their first major ground advance of the offensive, the Syrian army and its militia allies seized control of the Handarat Palestinian refugee camp, a few kilometres north of Aleppo, only for rebels to counterattack a few hours later.
Rebels said on Sunday they had retaken the camp before the bombing started.
“We retook the camp, but the regime burnt it with phosphorous bombs ... We were able to protect it, but the bombing burnt our vehicles,” 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 Hezbollah 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.
The assault on Aleppo could be the biggest battle yet in a civil war that has killed hundreds of thousands of people and driven 11 million from their homes.
Residents say air strikes on eastern Aleppo since the offensive was announced on Thursday have been more intense than ever, using more powerful bombs. Scores of people have been killed in the last few days.
Rebel officials said air strikes on Saturday hit at least four areas of the opposition-held east, and they believe the strikes are mostly being carried out by Russian warplanes. Video of the blast sites shows huge craters several metres wide and deep.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights 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.
US Secretary of State John Kerry, who hammered out the truce over the course of months of intensive diplomacy, was left pleading in vain last week with Russia to halt air strikes.
British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said in an interview aired on Sunday that Russia was guilty of prolonging the war in Syria and may have committed war crimes by targeting an aid convoy.
“[Russia] are guilty of protracting this war and making it far more hideous,” Johnson told the BBC’s Andrew Marr show.
“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.”
