VICE NEWS
After nearly two weeks of brutal shelling and urban combat left hundreds of people dead in the Syrian city of Aleppo, Russia and the United States declared a tentative truce in the city on Wednesday.
"Today there was no bombing, at least in our area," an Aleppo doctor who asked to be identified as Abu Luay told VICE News just hours after the announcement. Speaking via a messaging app, he said his colleagues at the hospital were relieved at the halt in the fighting.
"Part of the staff had been working in another location over the past few days," Luay said. "The maternity unit had moved to another area where they could work in a basement, but today they came back."
Like much of the war-torn country, Aleppo is divided. Forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad control the western half of the city, while mixed rebel factions hold the east. Areas around the city have periodically changed hands, and the regime's recent gains have put it within striking distance of totally besieging the rebel-held east. But forces within the city have been locked in a stalemate for almost four years. Snipers hunt in the no man's lands that divide the city, both sides lob shells across the front lines, and regime airstrikes have reduced much of the east to rubble.
Medical facilities and personnel have borne the brunt of the fighting. Last week, a series of airstrikes hammered the Doctors Without Borders-supported al-Quds Hospital in the eastern half of Aleppo, killing more than 50 civilians, including hospital staff and patients. Three others were reportedly killed and more than a dozen wounded when shells struck the al-Dabit Hospital in the western half of the city on Tuesday.
The US government and the Syrian regime offered conflicting statements on the timing of the truce. US State Department spokesperson said Wednesday that the truce had gone into effect that day at 12:01am local time. The Syrian military, meanwhile, said the truce would go into effect at 1:00am Thursday and only last for 48 hours. Pockets of fighting persisted in various areas on Wednesday.
"The regime can't be trusted," Abu Luay said. "But at least the pace or the intensity of it might be less if there's something signed."
State Department spokesperson Mark Toner admitted to reporters Wednesday that the truce is tenuous. "This all hinges on the idea that we as well as the Russians can influence the main combatants on the ground to uphold a cessation of hostilities," he said.
'The regime can't be trusted. But at least the pace or the intensity of it might be less if there's something signed.'
Violence in Aleppo intensified in late April and early May as a fragile nationwide ceasefire brokered by Russia and the US came apart. Over the past week and a half, the air above the city has thickened with mortar fire, rockets, and aerial bombing.
A local doctor who uses the name Abu al-Izz described how he and his team had desperately worked to save colleagues who had been caught in the bombing of al-Quds Hospital last week. Rescue workers had barely finished digging bodies out of the rubble on Wednesday.
"It was extremely difficult, because our colleagues — the doctors, nurses, the medical staff — we saw them all wounded and we had to give them emergency care," the doctor said. "We were imagining that those could be us, that we might need someone to treat us — and maybe, if we were wounded or our hospital was bombed, we wouldn't find anyone."
Russia's government has also denied responsibility for bombing the al-Quds Hospital. On Wednesday, a Russian military spokesperson claimed that the bombing didn't even take place, asserting that the hospital had been destroyed months earlier despite the fact that Doctors Without Borders (also known as Medecins Sans Frontires or MSF) has released photos and videos that clearly document the assault on the hospital. US Secretary of State John Kerry implied that Syrian government forces were responsible for the bombing.
"It appears to have been a deliberate strike on a known medical facility," Kerry said, "and follows the Assad regime's appalling record of striking such facilities and first responders."
Tags: , , , , ,