In Syria, casualties overwhelm hospitals
Associated Press
BEIRUT
Hospitals in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo are overwhelmed with casualties, an international aid group warned Tuesday, as government warplanes blasted opposition areas of the city as part of a withering three-day air assault that has killed more than 100 people.
The intensified air campaign, which one activist group in the city called “unprecedented,” suggests President Bashar Assad’s government is trying to crush opposition in the contested city, Syria’s largest, ahead of an international peace conference scheduled for late January in Switzerland.
Aleppo has been a major front in Syria’s civil war since the rebels launched an offensive there in mid-2012, and the city has since been carved into opposition- and government-held areas. On Tuesday, the main Western-backed opposition group, the Syrian National Council, accused the international community of “failing to take any serious position that would guarantee a stop to the bloodbath” ahead of the peace talks.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said airstrikes Tuesday killed 15 people, including two children, in the rebel-held Shaar district.