Syrian government air strikes killed dozens of civilians in the city of Aleppo and nearby areas on Friday as the UN security council prepared to discuss emergency aid drops to besieged areas. The raids were the most intense in more than a week, with dozens of barrel bombs — crude, unguided explosive devices — dropped on several rebel-held eastern districts of the city, an AFP correspondent said.
Ten people were killed when a bus they were travelling in was hit on the Castello road, a key rebel supply route out of Aleppo, the civil defence said. Twenty-eight other civilians were killed in regime strikes on several neighbourhoods in the rebel-held east of the city, said the civil defence, known as the White Helmets.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the Castello road was now "effectively cut". "All movement is targeted, be that buses or bystanders," its head Rami Abdel Rahman said.
Nearly 600,000 people are estimated to live under siege in Syria, most of them encircled by forces of President Bashar al-Assad's regime, whose approval the United Nations says is needed to deliver aid by air.
In May the UN said that if it did not see an improvement on aid access to besieged areas by June 1, it would task its food agency to carry out drops. The security council is set to convene in New York at 1400 GMT on Friday, with UN peace envoy Staffan de Mistura and UN aid chief Stephen O'Brien due to report to the body.
Officials have stressed the challenges and risks of aid operations in the skies above a country at war. UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said helicopters would have to be used to transport aid to 15 of 19 besieged areas that include densely populated towns.
"In urban areas, airdrops are not feasible, so you are talking about the use of helicopters," he said. "Each helicopter with about three metric tons on board would actually have to land and off-load," he added. "One can imagine the security challenges for that — plus the security challenges of flying helicopters over the skies of Syria."
The World Food Programme said that high-altitude airdrops to urban or semi-urban areas such as hunger-stricken Madaya and Daraya "are not possible owing to the risk of harming people on the ground". If land access is not granted to 15 of the besieged areas, "helicopter operations are the only viable option", it added.
The UN agency said it was preparing to request approval from the Syrian government for its airdrop plan, which would require at least 11 helicopters. Allowing aid into areas under siege is key to the resumption of peace talks on ending the five-year war that has killed 280,000 Syrians and displaced millions.
A truce brokered by Russia and the United States between the government and non-jihadist rebels has been violated nearly continuously around Aleppo. More than 300 civilians were killed in Aleppo in two weeks from April 22 as rebels pounded government-controlled neighbourhoods with rocket and artillery fire and the regime hit rebel areas with air raids.
In northern Syria, a US-backed alliance of Kurds and Arabs is advancing towards the town of Manbij, held by the
Islamic State jihadist group. US defence secretary Ashton Carter said on Friday that
ISIS jihadists in the town "aspire" to direct international terror plots.
The town is on the north-south axis between Jarabulus, on the border with Turkey and controlled by ISIS, and Raqqa, the jihadist group's self-proclaimed capital in Syria.
Capturing Manbij has long been seen as key in stemming the flow of foreign fighters into and out of Syria. "There are people there, and I can't go into any details, who aspire to inspiring or even directing plots outside of Syria," Carter said.
The US-led coalition also dropped ammunition, light weapons and anti-tank weapons to Syrian rebels within the past 24 hours as they try to prevent ISIS jihadists from entering the town of Marea in Aleppo province, the observatory said.
A US official confirmed the ammunition drops, but denied that they also contained weapons.
