Aleppo under bombardment as US, Russia clash over Syria

After the failure of the U.S.-Russia brokered cease-fire, hopes of any form of truce were flattened by the ferocity of the Bashar al-Assad regime's offensive on the opposition-held areas of Aleppo.

"Instead of pursuing peace, Russia and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad make war," Samantha Power, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, told the Security Council members on Sunday. "Even now, we will continue to look for any way possible to restore the cessation of hostilities, but it is common sense: a one-sided cessation of hostilities cannot hold," she added.

British Foreign Minister Boris Johnson said "whether the bombing of the aid convoy was done with the knowledge that the targets were civilian, and would therefore constitute a war crime," adding that the ongoing bombing in Aleppo was "absolutely barbaric."

Moscow hit back at the accusations on Monday, with Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov denouncing "the overall unacceptable tone and rhetoric of the representatives of the United Kingdom and the United States, which can damage and harm our relations".

The worst violence to hit the divided city in years continued on Monday, with residents warning that stores of food and vital medical supplies were dwindling to nothing. It was the fourth day of intense air raids on the city since a defiant Assad regime launched a new assault, vowing to retake all of Aleppo.

The Observatory said it had documented the deaths of 237 people, including 38 children, from air strikes on Aleppo city and the surrounding countryside since last Monday when the ceasefire ended. Of those documented deaths, 162 were in opposition-held east Aleppo city. Civil defense workers say about 400 people have died in the past week in the rebel-held parts of the city and surrounding countryside.

Rescue efforts have been severely hampered because bomb damage has made roads impassable and because civil defense centers and rescue equipment have been destroyed in raids. Civil defense worker Ammar al Selmo said rescuers have only two fire trucks and three ambulances left in Aleppo and that three fire trucks, two ambulances and three vans had been hit in the past week.

Hundreds of thousands of people have been killed in Syria's civil war and 11 million driven from their homes. "I don't know what's going to happen in the future. But it looks like there's more killing, more bombardment, more blood on the horizon," Hassan said. In Homs, a second group of Syrian rebels began to be evacuated from their last foothold in the city on Monday, state news agency SANA said.

The Observatory said around 100 fighters were in the group scheduled to leave to the northern Homs countryside. The first batch of around 120 fighters and their families left on Thursday. The evacuations are part of the Syrian government's attempts to conclude local agreements with rebels in besieged areas that have resulted in rebels being given safe passage to opposition-controlled areas.