Syrian Regime Raids On Aleppo Kill 16 Civilians

ALEPPO: Dozens of Syrian regime strikes on Aleppo killed at least 16 civilians on Sunday, a monitor said, and caused huge damage to one fighter-held district targeted by a barrel bomb.

The crude, unguided explosive device hit the Qaterji neighborhood, where an AFP photographer saw a street strewn with rubble as residents ran for safety and a rescuer rushed a bloodied child into an ambulance.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said nine civilians were killed in Qaterji and two others, including a child, were killed in the Mayssar neighborhood of the northern city.
Another five civilians were killed in two other districts and on the city’s outskirts.
In Qaterji a man stood in the middle of a road surrounded by debris and shouting angrily: “There are only civilians here, there are no rebels!“
Further down the street two women and two children scrambled for safety past the mangled iron shutters of shops and buildings badly damaged by the barrel bomb, the AFP photographer said.
The rescuer, his hair covered in white dust, carried a child with a blood-covered face to an ambulance in which another wounded child already lay. A truce agreed by Russia and the United States in February has been violated nearly continuously around Aleppo, where the regime and fighter groups have fought for control since 2012.
Around 200,000 people lived in eastern parts of Aleppo held by the fighters and the only route out of those areas has been cut following fierce fighting that erupted on Thursday.
More than 300 civilians have been killed in Aleppo since April.
The UN wants Damascus to allow airdrops of food and medicine to civilians trapped in besieged areas which aid convoys cannot reach.
The planes sending the aid need to be able to fly in a secure airspace, either with the agreement of warring parties, or by flying at very high altitude to escape missile fire.
At least 280,000 people have been killed and millions displaced since Syria’s war started in 2011 with the brutal repression of anti-government protests. Source Arab News

As the conflict in Syria has raged and spilled over its borders, I have been sceptical that there is an American military solution to the complex political and religious problems at the heart of the crisis. I remain sceptical, and am glad that the Obama administration has been reluctant to engage in a large-scale humanitarian intervention. But I am saddened that it has not engaged in large-scale humanitarian action. The distinction is important. For most of the last 75 years, the United States has been the world’s humanitarian. It has provided the most foreign aid and taken in the most refugees. For decades, America took in about 50 per cent of the total number of those who were resettled from foreign lands. Not anymore. American aid in the Syrian crisis has been matched by the European Union, and neither is doing enough. As for refugees, the US has become an international embarrassment. It has pledged to take in 10,000 Syrians but last year accepted just 2,192 and is struggling to take in more, despite the fact that, thanks to its distance from the conflict, it can be selective. Meanwhile, Canada, with a population about a tenth of America’s, has already resettled 25,000 Syrians. Germany has faced hundreds of thousands of refugees seeking asylum and has pledged to resettle more than 40,000. But the world’s richest countries are being put to shame by some of the poorest. Lebanon now has more than one million registered refugees, making up a quarter of the country’s population. Jordan is not far behind with about 650,000. And Turkey houses nearly three million. These countries need aid on an entirely different scale than they are receiving currently. In addition, Washington has traditionally taken the lead in setting the agenda for humanitarian action, corralling other countries to make donations, accept refugees and provide forces for peacekeeping operations. The administration is now acting on some of these fronts, but it is still not commensurate with the enormity of the suffering. Syria is a human tragedy of epic proportions. An estimated 400,000 people have died, 6.5 million have been internally displaced and nearly 5 million have fled the country. Some will say that this is precisely the reason we should send in more troops, bomb more targets and set up safe zones in the country. But that assumes that we have a local partner to work with and, most crucially, that there is some political order we could help establish that would be effective and legitimate in the eyes of the Syrians. Without those ingredients, foreign military intervention turns into chaos and colonial occupation. But what Washington can do is try to respond to the crisis with a set of humanitarian efforts that are equal to the scale of the tragedy. President Barack Obama should address the American public and describe the human suffering, remind us of our nation’s best traditions, and urge that Congress support him in providing more aid, receiving more refugees and leading in greater collaborative efforts internationally. He should appoint former presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton the country’s special ambassadors for humanitarian action on Syria. Donald Trump will criticise him. Republicans will raise the spectre of terrorism. But they are wrong and he should say so. Americans have always been wary of taking in refugees. Large majorities opposed taking in Germans (Jews) in the 1930s and even immediately following World War 2 after we had learned about the Holocaust. Fifty-five per cent opposed taking in Hungarians after the Soviet invasion in 1956, and 57 per cent from accepting the “boat people” of Indochina after the fall of Saigon in 1975. But America’s leaders insisted, and all these groups were accepted, assimilated and have become vital parts of American society. Obama is not running for re-election. He has been bold in other areas, proposing policies that he knows Congress will reject in the hope of changing the conversation. Why not on the single greatest source of human suffering in the world right now? The problem is not simply one that affects the political right or the Obama administration. Where is Bernie Sanders, who is very concerned about Americans who can’t pay for college but seems largely indifferent to Syrians who can’t manage to stay alive? Where are the world’s rock stars, who once sang We Are the World and staged a Live Aid concert to fight poverty in Africa? Millions of Syrian men, women and children are fleeing their homes, living in squalor and losing their lives. Where are all of us?

Read More : http://www.nst.com.my/news/2016/06/150015/how-long-will-we-ignore-syrias-pain