SYRIA — (CNN) The United Nations Security Council will hold an emergency meeting Wednesday on the dire humanitarian situation in the Syrian city of Aleppo, which a UN official described as a “descent into hell.”
French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault called for the meeting on Tuesday. He told Reuters that Syria’s brutal civil war, which has raged for almost six years, would not be resolved with one of the “biggest massacres on a civilian population since Word War Two.”
“This (Security Council) meeting would have to find a way to deal with the humanitarian situation and see how we can get aid in. We have to find a way,” Ayrault said.
Regime forces entered eastern Aleppo by ground on Saturday in an operation to wrest control of the area from rebels, who have ruled there for more than four years.
Civilians are fleeing to safety — many to government-controlled western Aleppo — as the regime continues to pound the east with airstrikes, and as rebels fire back from their stronghold enclaves.
Around 20,000 people have fled the violence in eastern Aleppo in recent days, UN humanitarian chief Stephen O’Brien told CNN on Tuesday night. Around 600 people have been killed since Saturday, various activist sources have told CNN. Fifty-three people were killed on Tuesday, and another 45 had died by Wednesday afternoon, the Aleppo Media Center activist group said.
The regime has made rapid territorial gains since entering eastern Aleppo on the ground Saturday, taking a huge portion of the northeast. Russian media on Monday cited its defense ministry, saying 40% of the east was now in regime hands, however CNN sources put the figure at just over 20%. Their gains drive a wedge through the zone and splits it into two sections.
What will Trump do?
International calls are growing louder for a political solution to end the war. A solution has evaded the UN Security Council for years, with Russia using its veto power as one of five permanent members to block several resolutions.
Russia is the most powerful ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime and has since September 2015 carried out airstrikes to prop up the embattled leader. Moscow is widely blamed for the destruction in Aleppo, but it has tried to distance itself from the current assault.
Russia’s ambassador to the UN, Vitaly Churkin, said Tuesday that Russia had not bombed Aleppo since October 18.
Russia and the US have stood on opposing sides of the conflict. Moscow considers all opposition rebel groups as terrorist groups, while Washington has supported and armed some of the same groups.
Questions have swirled over what approach US President-elect Donald Trump will take to the war. As a candidate, Trump praised Russian President Vladimir Putin, and suggested that he wanted to improve US-Russia ties.
Russian media said Moscow had been in contact with the incoming Trump administration on Syria, but a spokesman for Putin told CNN he could not confirm the reports.
“As far as we know, the newly-elected president’s team is not yet formed. All questions about the present status of resolving Syria or other conflicts are continuing with our partners from the current administration of the president of the United States,” Dmitry Peskov said.
Around 200,000 people remain in eastern Aleppo. But it is now a wasteland, with severe shortages of food, clean water, fuel and medical supplies.
Britain’s ambassador to the UN Matthew Rycroft echoed France’s calls for the emergency meeting, saying the council would discuss plans for the UN to deliver aid and to evacuate the sick and wounded, the Agence France-Presse news agency reported.
“The future of Aleppo is in the hands of the regime and Russia, and we urge the regime and Russia to stop the bombing and let the aid go through.”
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