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Fighting continues in Aleppo after US-Russia deal
Fighting continued in southern Aleppo on Saturday, the army and rebels said, shortly after the United States and Russia hailed a breakthrough deal to end the violence.
"The fighting is flaring on all the fronts of southern Aleppo but the clashes in Amiryah are the heaviest," said Abdul Salam Abdul Razak, the military spokesman of the rebel Nour al-Din al-Zinki Brigades.
Recent government gains in Ramousah have reopened the main route into the government-held west, and let forces backing President Bashar al-Assad encircle the city's rebel-held east.
On Friday night first responders in Aleppo pulled the bodies of nine people, including four children, from the rubble following air raids Friday on a rebel-held district, while another 10 people were killed by the shelling of government-held parts of the city.
The Syrian Civil Defense, also known as the White Helmets, said helicopters dropped crude barrel bombs.
The activist-operated Aleppo Media Centre and the Local Coordination Committees also reported that nine were killed in the bombing. The LCC said five were wounded and rescuers continued to sift through the rubble for survivors.
The UN humanitarian chief Stephen O'Brien described the situation in besieged rebel-held eastern Aleppo as "extremely severe."
Aleppo, Syria's largest city and one time commercial centre, has been divided since 2012.
Read also: Holding on to Aleppo: Meeting those refusing to leave |
The United Nations' humanitarian chief voiced anger on Monday at world powers' inability to agree on a truce to allow aid into Aleppo, warning of an "humanitarian catastrophe unparalleled in the over five years of bloodshed" in the battleground Syrian city.