Russia declares truce after giving Aleppo a round of bombardment

Russian warplanes pounded rebel-held areas of Syria’s battleground second city Aleppo on Tuesday hours after Moscow announced a humanitarian pause in its bombardment, a monitor said.
“Russian airplanes carried out intensive air strikes after midnight, targeting many districts of east Aleppo” the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
At midmorning Tuesday, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said that Russian and Syrian air forces had stopped airstrikes from 10 a.m. local time (0700 GMT), ahead of the announced “humanitarian pause” scheduled for Oct. 20.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said on Monday that a pause in strikes on Syria’s largest city would be in force on Thursday, from 0800 (0500 GMT) until 1600, to allow civilians and rebels to leave the city.
Military experts will meet in Geneva on Wednesday to begin work on separating “terrorists” from Syria’s opposition, Russia’s state Rossiya 24 channel showed Shoigu saying.
The Britain-based monitor had no immediate word on casualties early Tuesday’s bombardment.
The group, which relies on a network of sources inside Syria for its information, says it determines what planes carried out raids according to their type, location, flight patterns and the munitions involved.
Syrian government aircraft have also carried out intensive air strikes on rebel areas since Damascus launched an offensive to recapture the whole city on September 22.
The former commercial and industrial hub has been divided by a front line slicing through its historic heart since rebels seized eastern districts in summer 2012.
One of Tuesday’s pre-dawn strikes flattened an apartment block in the rebel-held Bustan Al-Qasr district, an AFP correspondent reported.
The United Nations welcomed the pause but said it was not long enough to allow aid deliveries or the evacuation of those civilians who wished to leave.

Source: Arab News