Call
by US secretary of state comes as the number of Iran-backed Shia militias
battling Sunni rebels in Aleppo swells.
Syrian government troops are
advancing gradually against opposition fighters inside Aleppo, even as the US
secretary of state calls for Russia and Syria to face a war-crimes
investigation for alleged attacks on Syrian civilians.
John Kerry spoke on Friday in
advance of discussions on a draft UN Security Council resolution that would
call for an end to the Russian-backed onslaught on Syria's second city.
The two-week assault by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's forces has led to a global outcry after air strikes on hospitals and a UN aid convoy.
The two-week assault by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's forces has led to a global outcry after air strikes on hospitals and a UN aid convoy.
"These are acts that beg for an
appropriate investigation of war crimes, and those who commit these would and
should be held accountable for these actions," Kerry said in Washington,
DC.
|
UN envoy says eastern Aleppo faces
"total destruction"
|
"They are beyond the accidental
now … way beyond … years beyond the accidental. This is a targeted strategy to
terrorise civilians and to kill anybody and everybody who is in the way of
their military objectives."
The assault on rebel-held districts
of Aleppo has elicited a warning from Staffan de Mistura, the UN
envoy, that eastern Aleppo could be "totally destroyed" by the
year's end.
Fierce fighting on Friday rocked
several districts of the city, which has been divided between government
control in the west and rebel control in the east since 2012.
Government forces captured a hilltop
in the Sheikh Saeed district in the south of Aleppo, but the rebels retook
other parts of the neighbourhood previously captured by the government,
according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and rescue workers on the
ground.
The UK-based monitoring group also
reported clashes in the Salaheddin, Bustan al-Basha and Suleiman al-Halabi
neighbourhoods on the city's frontline.
"This morning regime forces
tried to take over several points in the Skeikh Saeed area, but rebel forces
managed to push them out, taking more than 10 fighters prisoners, all of them
from Iraqi Shia militias," Ibrahim Abu Leith, spokesman for the Syria
Civil Defence in Aleppo, told Al Jazeera.
Also known as the White Helmets, the
volunteer rescue group operates in rebel-held areas across Syria.
Iraqi
militia presence
For their part, rebels in Aleppo
said on Friday that they had killed at least 23 pro-government fighters,
injured dozens and captured at least six Iraqi Shia militia members deployed on
behalf of the Assad government.
Thousands of Iraqi Shia militia
members and members of Lebanon's Hezbollah are fighting alongside government
forces in Aleppo against primarily Sunni rebel forces.
More than 1,000 Iraqi Shia fighters
have travelled to Aleppo from Iraq since early September, joining the ranks of
another 4,000 already on the ground in the area, militia leaders and Syrian
rebels told the Wall Street Journal earlier this week.
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