Russian shells kill 61 civilians in Aleppo

ALEPPO, Syria

At least 61 civilians, including women and children, were killed and scores of others injured Wednesday in ongoing shelling by Russian and Syrian regime aircraft over besieged neighborhoods of eastern Aleppo, according to a civil defense official.

Baybars Meshaal of Aleppo’s civil defense said that the shelling has been ongoing since Tuesday afternoon.

Meshaal said the shelling targeted the neighborhoods of Salahuddin, Al-Ansari, Al-Sukkari, al-Firdaws, Al-Qatirgi, Al-Maysar, Al-Shaar, Al-Sakhur, and Bab al-Nairab.

A school in the neighborhood of Al-Shaar was targeted by these shells and a number of children were injured, he added.

“The civil defense teams and ambulance crews find it difficult to reach the targeted places due to the ongoing intensive shelling that targets everything that moves,” he added.

He said a paramedic was killed when a shell landed near his ambulance while trying to reach targeted places.

Tuesday afternoon a fierce air campaign was launched against areas controlled by the Syrian opposition in Aleppo after some three weeks of relative calmness.

Syria has been locked in a vicious civil war since early 2011, when the Assad regime cracked down on pro-democracy protests with unexpected ferocity.

Since then, hundreds of thousands of people have been killed – and more than 10 million displaced – across the war-battered country, according to UN figures.

The Syrian Center for Policy Research, a Beirut-based NGO, has put the total death toll from the five-year-old conflict at more than 470,000.

In Sept. 30 of last year, Russia launched an extensive air campaign in Syria with the aim of propping up the embattled regime of Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad.

*Reporting by Khaled Suleiman; Writing by Ali Abo Rezeg