Screaming girl echoes the horror that's Syria

30 September 2016 - 09:49 By Staff reporter, AFP

A young Syrian girl is heard screaming as she is pulled out of the rubble of a destroyed building in the besieged city of Aleppo during a four-hour rescue operation. Sky News reported that 24 people were said to have been killed in the air strike that collapsed the building. At least 15 others were reportedly injured.''Footage filmed by the Syrian Civil Defence rescue team shows the terrified youngster screaming as they try to keep her calm and pass her water to keep her alive," the TV channel reported yesterday.Rescuers drilled through the concrete for four hours to reach the girl - named by the rescuers as Ghazal Qasim - eventually prising her out of a gap in the rubble.''Covered in dust and still visibly distressed, she is carried to an ambulance in Aleppo's al Shaar district," the Sky report said.Syrian Civil Defence said the air strike was carried out by the Russians. It said 400 people had been killed in air attacks in the ruined - but still densely populated - city as a ceasefire, brokered by the US and Russia, failed.Dozens of civilians have been killed, residential buildings have been reduced to rubble and residents of east Aleppo face severe shortages.Children's agency Unicef said at least 96 children have been killed and 223 wounded since last Friday in eastern Aleppo.Russia said yesterday it would press on with a bombing campaign in Syria, ignoring US threats. The UN continued to plead for medical evacuations from Aleppo.Moscow is backing a ferocious assault by the forces of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to seize the rebel-held eastern part of Aleppo.The US has threatened to pull the plug on any more talks with Russia if it does not halt the attack on Aleppo as acrimony seethes between the two powers after the collapse of the truce deal.Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov insisted that despite "unconstructive" rhetoric from Washington, Moscow was still interested in seeing the tattered deal, meant to see the US and Russia eventually co-ordinate strikes on jihadists, work out.He blamed the surge in violence on Washington's failure to control rebel groups fighting in Aleppo and insisted that Syrian forces were battling "terrorists"."Moscow is continuing its air operation to support the anti-terrorist actions of the Syrian armed forces," he said.But Moscow - which has been flying a bombing campaign in support of Assad for a year - was facing fresh calls to help halt the bloodshed in Syria that has claimed about 300,000 lives since 2011.Assad opponents German chancellor Angela Merkel and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Russia has a "responsibility to calm violence and give political process a chance" in Syria."The latest offensive by the Syrian regime against Aleppo - supported by Russia - has made the suffering of the civilian population yet worse," the two leaders said."The bombing must stop. Civilians must be protected. And the cessation of hostilities must be restored," UN deputy envoy for Syria, Ramzy Ezzeldin Ramzy said. He was speaking a day after two of the largest hospitals in the city's east were bombed, prompting UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon to describe that attack as a war crime. ..

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