ALEPPO: Russia said Thursday it was prepared to secure safe passage for rebels to quit Syria’s Aleppo but kept up air strikes on the battleground city as world powers readied new truce talks.
In a development demonstrating the perils of journeying in the war-wracked country, at least 17 people — most of them rebels — died in a car bomb blast at an opposition checkpoint in northern Aleppo province on Thursday, a monitor said.
The blast hit near the town of Azaz close to the border with Turkey, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, adding that 14 of the dead were rebel fighters. It said the toll could rise.
The Islamic State group has regularly targeted rebel factions with bomb attacks, including an October 6 attack at a border crossing in neighbouring Idlib province that killed 29 rebels.
Syria has been plunged into some of the worst violence of its five-year war since the collapse last month of a truce brokered by Washington and Moscow.
The ensuing surge in fighting has accompanied a large-scale government offensive, backed by Russian air power, to capture the opposition-held half of battered Aleppo.
Russia said Thursday it was willing to give rebels safe passage out of Aleppo, where over 250,000 people are under government siege.
“We are ready to ensure the safe withdrawal of armed rebels, the unimpeded passage of civilians to and from eastern Aleppo, as well as the delivery of humanitarian aid there,” Russian Lieutenant General Sergei Rudskoy said in a televised briefing.
Early morning raids in east Aleppo killed at least seven civilians, the Observatory said, and regime forces captured high ground overlooking opposition areas on the northeastern outskirts of the city.
The Observatory also said five children were killed by rebel rocket fire on western regime-held neighbourhoods, with state television saying a school had been hit.
Residents in the west said they had been forced to pull over in their cars to take shelter in buildings because of the barrage of rebel fire.
