Rescue workers said that 45 people were killed in an artillery barrage by regime forces on a housing area for those displaced in rebel-held eastern Aleppo on Wednesday morning.
The Civil Defense said that dozens more people were wounded in the artillery attack that hit Jub Alqubba neighborhood. Most of the dead were women and children, it added.
It was the second time the Jub Alqubba neighborhood in eastern Aleppo was struck in two days. An airstrike killed at least 25 civilians on Tuesday. Thousands of residents in east Aleppo have in the past couple of days moved to Jub Alqubba and other neighborhoods fleeing regime forces advancing on the rebel-held east.
Images published by the Civil Defense showed bodies strewn on a debris-filled road in the rebel-held neighborhood.
Vice-president of the Syrian Coalition Abdul Ahad Steifo called upon the US President Barack Obama to intervene to stop the massacres being committed by the Assad regime and Russian forces. “although he is in the last days of his term in office, we are fully confident in the ability of President Obama, as the head of the world’s sole superpower, to stop these massacres once there is a will to do so.”
Steifo stressed that “the death of dozens of civilians fleeing eastern Aleppo by the Assad regime and Russian forces on Tuesday should prompt friends of the Syrian people, especially the United States, Great Britain, and France to take action to stop this despicable, brutal aggression against our people.”
Action has become absolutely necessary even if it meant action should be taken outside the UN Security Council which has been disabled by Russia’s repeated use of its veto power, Steifi said. He added that Russia is a partner of the Assad regime in the shedding of the blood of Syrian civilians.
The people of eastern Aleppo are facing a certain death as a result of the regime and Russian onslaught. If they chose to stay in the besieged neighborhoods, they would be bombed by Russian jets, and if they fled to safer areas, they would be hit by the Assad regime’s heavy artillery. This makes it imperative that friends of the Syrian people take a firm stand to put an end to this bloodshed. (Source: Syrian Coalition’s Media Office)
