Assad launches ground assault, Aleppo faces 'genocide'

Syrian regime forces have begun an all-out ground assault on besieged opposition-held east Aleppo on Wednesday as many civilians trapped in the war-torn city of Aleppo. More than 600,000 Aleppo civilians are under the threat of genocide, the Syrian High Negotiations Committee (HNC) spokesman Riyad Nassan Agha said on Wednesday, as reported by Saudi-owned news channel al-Arabiya. The Bashar al-Assad's forces backed by Russian air power, Iranian ground forces and Shiite militias from Iran, Iraq and Lebanon has launched a massive assault on four fronts in the besieged city. An air strike and artillery fire hit the two largest hospitals in opposition-held parts of Syria's Aleppo on Wednesday, in what rights groups said was a deliberate strategy of targeting civilian infrastructure. Shelling also damaged a bakery, killing six residents queuing up for bread under a siege that has trapped 250,000 people with food running out. The two hospitals were struck just before dawn, with the M10 facility hit in an air strike and the M2 facility hit with artillery fire, said Adham Sahloul of the Syrian American Medical Society (SAMS), which supports both hospitals. The attacks put both facilities temporarily out of commission and left only six hospitals operational in the eastern parts of the city, Sahloul said, calling the attacks "deliberate."

Humanitarian routes to evacuate sick and wounded Syrians from besieged eastern Aleppo should be established, the U.N. health organization urged Tuesday, as rescue workers reported 13 more civilians killed in airstrikes on the opposition-held area. "All access routes to east Aleppo are closed, leaving no options for the civilian population to leave the besieged area," the statement said.

The week-old assault has already killed hundreds of people, with bunker-busting bombs bringing down buildings on residents huddled inside. Only about 30 doctors are believed to be left inside the besieged zone, coping with hundreds of wounded a day.

The latest bombardment of Aleppo has been some of the worst in Syria's five-year civil war, and comes after the failure of a short-lived ceasefire brokered by Russia and the United States earlier this month.

Pope Francis on Wednesday said those behind the bombing of Aleppo, where Syrian and Russian forces have conducted days of deadly airstrikes, will have to "answer before God." "I appeal to the conscience of those responsible for the bombardment, who will have to answer before God," the pope said at his weekly address in St Peter's square, without naming Syria or Russia.

He spoke of his "deep pain and serious concern about the events" in Aleppo, where air strikes by Syrian and Russian forces on eastern rebel positions have sparked international condemnation. The Pope referred to Aleppo as a "battered city where children, the elderly, the sick, the young, the old are dying... so many people." He also repeated his call for "everyone to commit themselves with all their power to the protection of civilians," adding that this was "an imperative and urgent obligation."

Assad forces and Russian warplanes have intensified airstrikes on opposition-held neighborhoods in Aleppo in recent weeks. On Tuesday, at least 22 civilians were killed and dozens injured when Russian warplanes struck Aleppo's Al-Mashhad and Al-Shear districts with vacuum bombs. Since Sept. 19 when the Syrian regime ended a week-long cease-fire, almost 500 civilians were killed and hundreds injured in attacks on the war-battered city.Syria has been locked in a vicious civil war since early 2011, when the Bashar al-Assad regime cracked down on pro-democracy protests -- which erupted as part of the "Arab Spring" uprisings with unexpected ferocity. The Syrian Center for Policy Research, a Beirut-based NGO, has put the total death toll from the five-year conflict at more than 470,000.