The Syrian civil war reached its highest level of violence after a U.S.-brokered ceasefire with Russia failed spectacularly.
Russia and President Bashar al-Assad have abandoned all pretense of humanitarian inclinations, and have now begun indiscrimately bombing the city. Reports indicate the death toll Monday was nearly 100, mostly composed of women and children.
The ceasefire agreement stipulated that all parties in Syria would have a “genuine reduction of violence,” for a period of one week. If the ceasefire held for a week, then the U.S. would open a joint operations center with Russia meant to target the Islamic State and al-Qaida elements in Syria. The ceasefire was repeatedly broken by Russia and the Assad regime, and outright failed on September 19.
“Talk is cheap and the important thing right now is to figure out what’s the alternative that the American people and the United States Congress will support,” U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry told reporters Monday while defending the agreement.
“Diplomacy in the absence of leverage is a recipe for failure. At best, it offers the Obama administration a fig leaf to cover the abject failure of its Syria policy and the fact that there is no Plan B,” Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham told The Wall Street Journal Monday.
Kerry admitted that the diplomatic vacuum and lack of Plan B in Syria has led to “Assad and Russia wanting to simply try to pursue a military victory.”
An Agence Frasse Presse report from rebel-held areas of Aleppo indicate food supplies have dwindled to almost zero, and that medical resources remain scant.
Assad and Russia’s renewed extreme bombing campaign is likely trying to make life in rebel-held Aleppo as miserable as possible. The regime and its allies believe Aleppo will capitulate to the regime faster, if its supplies are exhausted. Save the Children, an international non-governmental organization told The New York Times children were “dying on the floors of hospitals” for want of medical supplies.
The Assad regime and its allies justify their heavy-handed approach by classifying everyone inside Aleppo as either a “terrorist” or a terrorist sympathizer.
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