[The International Committee of the Red Cross issued an urgent call for all combatants to put humanitarian objectives ahead of military ones and to reach an agreement on evacuating civilians. “We stand ready to oversee the implementation of any mutual agreement that puts civilians first,” the group’s Syria director, Marianne Gasser, said in a statement from Aleppo. “We cannot urge this strongly enough: This must happen now.”]
By Nick Cumming-Bruce and Anne
Barnard
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Families that fled
violence in the Bustan al-Qasr neighborhood of Aleppo on
Tuesday arriving in the
Fardous area, where shooting was also reported.
Credit Agence
France-Presse — Getty Images
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GENEVA
— Pro-government forces
retaking the eastern neighborhoods of the besieged Syrian city of Aleppo killed
at least 82 civilians on Monday, the United Nations estimated, in what one
official called “a complete meltdown of humanity.”
Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, the United Nations
high commissioner for human rights, warned that the blood bath in Aleppo, a
once-thriving northern metropolis that is close to falling under the
government’s complete control after more than four years of fighting, could
spread to other cities where rebels are active.
“What is happening with Aleppo could repeat
itself in Douma, in Raqqa, in Idlib,” he said on Tuesday. “We cannot let this
continue.”
Also on Tuesday, the French government said
it was “deeply concerned” about reports of a chemical attack in the eastern suburbs
of the city of Hama a day earlier. The Union of Medical Care and Relief
Organizations, an international coalition of humanitarian groups, said the
attack had killed at least 93 civilians and wounded 300, but those numbers
could not be confirmed independently.
The death toll for eastern Aleppo, recorded
in four neighborhoods — Bustan al-Qasr, al-Fardous, al-Kallaseh and al-Saleheen
— included 11 women and 13 children, some shot in the streets as they tried to
flee the fighting, said Rupert Colville, a spokesman for the United Nations
high commissioner for human rights. He cited reports the world body had
received from reliable contacts inside and outside the city.
Mr. Colville said pro-government forces had
also reportedly entered homes and killed those they found inside, including
women and children.
They also shot and killed civilians on Monday
in al-Ahrar Square in al-Kallaseh, and in the Bustan al-Qasr neighborhood, he
said, adding that an Iraqi militia group had been among the forces involved.
By early Monday evening, opposition groups
were estimated to control just a third of a square mile of the city, Mr.
Colville said, citing “deeply disturbing reports” of streets filled with bodies
that could not be retrieved by residents because of the intensity of the
fighting and of the fear of being shot on sight.
Pro-government television channels showed
footage of Bustan al-Qasr eerily empty; its residents appeared to have fled,
some going to government-controlled areas and others to the shrinking zones
still held by rebels.
“Civilians have paid a brutal price during
this conflict, and we are filled with the deepest foreboding for those who
remain in this last hellish corner of opposition-held eastern Aleppo,” Mr.
Colville said.
Jens Laerke, a spokesman for the United
Nations office coordinating emergency relief, reported that about 37,000 people
had fled eastern Aleppo to western areas of the city or to the surrounding
countryside. An estimated 14,700 took refuge in collective shelters, including
in a cotton factory, he said. He called the events “a complete meltdown of
humanity.”
Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault of France
called the assault on Aleppo a “martyrdom.”
In a statement, he described “coldblooded
murders of entire families on the ground who were deemed close to the
opposition; summary executions, including of women and children; people burned
alive in their homes; the continuation of systematic targeting of hospitals,
their staff and their patients.”
He added, “Such atrocities have outraged the
conscience.”
Thousands of civilians remain in areas
previously held by rebel groups, including opposition activists and civil
defense members who Mr. Ayrault said now risked detention, torture and death.
Some rebel fighters escaped, while others
surrendered to pro-government troops and were escorted out of the city, Mr.
Ayrault added. Russian television showed footage of such scenes.
The United Nations has heard from families
outside the conflict area that they had lost touch with relatives inside the
city, Mr. Colville said.
Only monitoring by the United Nations or
other external bodies would allay the suspicion that widespread crimes may be
underway, Mr. Colville said.
The Aleppo Media Center, an activist group of
journalists and citizens, reported mass killings of families in eastern Aleppo,
but the reports could not be independently confirmed.
Jan Egeland, the United Nations humanitarian
adviser for Syria, said the governments of Russia and Syria were “accountable
for any and all atrocities that the victorious militias in Aleppo are now
committing.”
The International Committee of the Red Cross
issued an urgent call for all combatants to put humanitarian objectives ahead
of military ones and to reach an agreement on evacuating civilians. “We stand
ready to oversee the implementation of any mutual agreement that puts civilians
first,” the group’s Syria director, Marianne Gasser, said in a statement from
Aleppo. “We cannot urge this strongly enough: This must happen now.”
Nick Cumming-Bruce reported from Geneva, and
Anne Barnard from Beirut, Lebanon. Sewell Chan contributed reporting from
London.
