Mirror
Dozens of civillians including women and children have been slaughtered in stricken Aleppo in the past 48 hours after being caught in crossfire whilst besieged by Syrian regime forces.
More than 300,000 are trapped in the Syrian city which, according to Tory MP Andrew Mitchell is becoming the ‘new Srebrenica’ - the Bosnian city where thousands of Muslims died as the UN looked on in 1995.
Around two million Aleppo citizens have already fled the city which is in ruins after five years of bitter fighting between President Assad’s troops and rebel factions.
It came as it emerged a helicopter overnight had dropped suspected chlorine gas on a town in Syria’s Idlib province - leaving 33 civilians including 18 woman and ten children being rushed to hospital.
The attack happened just hours after a Russian helicopter was shot down by rebels nearby.
esterday Mr Mitchell, a former international development secretary, warned Aleppo will “forever be a symbol of international shame”.
He was referring to Serb forces slaughtering 8,000 Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica , near Sarajevo, in 1995 - a massacre made more infamous because UN troops failed to stop it.
And Mitchell also accused the international community of having stood by while “appalling slaughter” takes place in the country’s second largest city.
Eastern Aleppo has been held by rebel groups since July 2012, but has recently been besieged by government forces battling rebels who are trying to free the city.
GettySyrians gather around a burning wreckage of a helicopterSyrians surround the wreckage of a downed Russian helicopter
Nadim Houry, deputy Middle East director of Human Rights Watch, said recently: “Syrian government forces are repeating the terrible siege tactics in densely populated eastern Aleppo that devastated civilian populations in other towns in Syria.
“Syrian authorities should allow aid in and permit civilians wishing to leave to do so safely.”
The UN Security Council has demanded that all warring factions allow aid workers swift and safe access to the people of Aleppo and that they should break the siege.
Aleppo’s eastern quarter, which is controlled by opposition armed groups, has been effectively under siege since government forces cut off the main supply road through constant shelling and airstrikes.
ReutersMembers of the Free Syrian Army patrol in Sukari, Aleppo province, July 20, 2012Syrian rebels in Aleppo in 2012
The UN estimates that the eastern part of the city has a population of between 250,000 and 300,000, and aid agencies estimate that a third of them depend on aid.
International aid workers told Human Rights Watch that residents face health and nutrition problems as aid is not getting through to this part of the city.
ReutersCivilians gather as smoke rises from petrol tankers after they were hit by a fighter jet in the Bab al-Nayrab district in the Syrian city of AleppoThe conflict has seen petrol tankers in the city hit by fighter planes
Ibrahim Abu al-Laith, who volunteers in Aleppo with Syrian Civil Defense, a search-and-rescue organization that operates in opposition-held Syria, said: “It is a crisis situation in our city. We don’t have any vegetables, a package of bread is £4 and gas stations are usually out of gasoline.
“The lines of people at shops to stock up on rations are extremely long.
“We are really expecting a famine… Also, any injured people who need specialized treatment and need to be taken out of Aleppo are now completely stuck.”
ReutersA man searches the rubble of a damaged buildingMuch of the city has been reduced to rubble
According to the Syrian Network for Human Rights, Syrian and Russian military forces were responsible for the death of 278 civilians, including 154 children and 78 women, between June 1 and July 13.
More than 400,000 people have died in Syria in the war, which is now in its fifth year and was sparked by the
Arab Spring uprisings throughoput the Middle East and North Africa.