The Syrian Civil Defence, the volunteer first responders also known as the White Helmets, reported on Twitter Saturday morning that all their teams and volunteers are “active across the city – hundreds trapped under rubble from indiscriminate air strikes. Hospitals overwhelmed.”
The White Helmets are operating in the city despite losing three of their centres, damaged in airstrikes, and the loss of one of their volunteers on Friday. Khalid al-Naimi was the third brother in his family killed working with the organization.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported on Friday the deaths of at least 72 people, killed in airstrikes the Observatory said were carried out by “Russian warplanes, regime’s helicopter and warplanes.”
Khaled Katib, a photographer with the White Helmets, reported 81 killed and 130 injured in more than 150 airstrikes and artillery shells in the city on Friday alone.
Medical aid agency Médecins san frontières (MSF), which runs six medical facilities in northern Syria, said on Friday it had seen “significant increases in the numbers of wounded patients” over the past two days.
“We are deeply worried by the high numbers of wounded reported by the hospitals we support, and also know that in many areas the wounded and sick have nowhere to go at all – they are simply left to die,” said Carlos Francisco, MSF’s head of mission in Syria.
Rebel forces in the city have accused the Syrian regime of deliberately reducing the city to ruins. A senior official in the Levant Front, a rebel faction in Aleppo, told Reuters, “They are using weapons that appear to be specifically for (bringing down) buildings.”
“Most of the victims are under the rubble because more than half the civil defence has been forced out of service,” he added.
“There are no more roads to walk on,” an activist in Aleppo, Zaher Azzaher, told the New York Times. “Even between our neighbourhoods, the roads are full of rubble and destruction.”
Water supplies to the city have been cut off after attacks prevented repairs to one pumping station and another station was shut off in retaliation, the UN’s children’s agency (UNICEF) told the BBC.
Kieran Dwyer, a spokesperson for UNICEF, said nearly two million people are now without water, adding that this will have “catastrophic” consequences as it puts the population at risk of disease if they are forced to used contaminated water.
Staffan de Mistura, the UN’s special envoy for Syria, described the heavy bombardment of Aleppo as a “return to open conflict,” in an interview with Al Jazeera.
“As far as I'm concerned, this is considered the worst humanitarian tragedy since the Second World War,” de Mistura said on Al Jazeera’s show Upfront.
