BEIRUT -- Syrian residents in the opposition-held eastern part of Aleppo hunkered under a wave of airstrikes Friday amid intense clashes between government forces and rebels, while a senior opposition official warned that supplies of food and medicines were fast running out in the besieged city.
The aerial bombardment is part of a weekslong military campaign by Syria and Russia that the opposition says has killed dozens of people in the past three days alone.
President Bashar Assad has expressed his intention to recapture the northern city's rebel eastern neighborhoods, saying that a military victory in Aleppo would provide the Syrian army with a "springboard" from which to liberate other areas of the country.
Syrian government forces have encircled the eastern half of Aleppo, besieging tens of thousands of people and pounding the territory with airstrikes on daily basis. The siege and deadly bombardment have caused an international outcry with a number of countries and groups accusing Syria and Russia of war crimes in connection with attacks on medical facilities and aid convoys.
Mohammad Fadelah, the head of the Aleppo Provincial Council, said the opposition had brought in enough supplies to Aleppo under an emergency plan that would last six months. But he said that with the recent escalation and bombing of hospitals and bakeries, supplies were quickly running out.
"We have emergency reserves but I think we can maybe go another month with what we have. Flour will run out in a month," he told reporters by telephone Friday from the city of Gazientep in southern Turkey. He estimated there were about 275,000 people in the besieged, eastern Aleppo.
President Barack Obama, after meeting with his National Security Council on Friday evening, directed the team to renew diplomatic efforts to reduce the bloodshed in Syria and end the civil war.
After having recently cut off diplomatic talks with Russia when a Syrian cease-fire failed, the president called the meeting to discuss the next steps to find a new, viable strategy to stem the violence even as the bloodshed in Aleppo and elsewhere continues to mount.
The White House said in a statement that while bilateral talks with Russia had been suspended, discussions with key nations are needed to "encourage all sides to support a more durable and sustainable diminution of violence."
The violence in Syria also gives additional urgency to today's meeting in Switzerland between Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on efforts to find a peace deal for Syria. It will be the first face-to-face contact between the two men since the U.S. broke off bilateral diplomatic contact with Moscow earlier this month.
Russia's foreign minister sought to lower expectations before the talks.
"I don't have any particular expectations," Lavrov said Friday. "So far, we haven't seen our partners to make any steps to get closer to fulfilling the agreements that we have."
Late Friday, Iran's semiofficial Fars news agency reported that Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif will also attend the talks in the Swiss city of Lausanne.
Cease-fire on Agenda
A U.S.-Russia-brokered cease-fire last month collapsed in less than a week amid renewed fighting for Aleppo, where Russian warplanes are backing the Syrian army offensive.
A key aim of this weekend's high-level meeting on Syria is to get countries that support moderate opposition groups to use their influence to work for a new cease-fire, Russia's U.N. ambassador said Friday.
Vitaly Churkin said Kerry and Lavrov decided "to revisit" the format they originally discussed three years ago of meeting with a small group of countries that have close ties with moderate opposition groups instead of some 20 countries in the International Syria Support Group, where it was difficult to agree on specifics.
Of today's smaller meeting, Churkin said, "I think it will be very important to see: Are they prepared to really work for a cessation of hostilities?
"If this time they are more responsible about it, then progress can be made," he said.
Churkin said Lavrov and Kerry can then "revisit the arrangements" in the Sept. 9 cessation-of-hostilities agreement.
"I think both we and the Americans believe that this is not beyond the realm of the possible, to restart those arrangements," Churkin said.
The meeting comes a week after rival resolutions on Syria backed by the West and by Russia were defeated in the U.N. Security Council. Russia had vetoed a French-drafted resolution demanding an immediate halt to the Russian and Syrian bombing of the rebel-held eastern part of Aleppo. The Russian draft failed to get the minimum nine "yes" votes needed for approval by the 15-member council.
New Zealand has circulated a new draft that "demands an immediate and complete end to all attacks which may result in the death or injury or damage to civilian objects in Syria, in particular those carried out by air in Aleppo."
Lavrov's deputy, Gennady Gatilov, said Friday that a new U.N. Security Council resolution must endorse provisions of the U.S.-Russian truce and include U.N. envoy Staffan de Mistura's proposal for the Jabhat Fatah al-Sham to leave Aleppo in exchange for a halt in Russian and Syrian army attacks.
The militant group already has rejected de Mistura's suggestion.
Churkin warned that if the new text includes things rejected in the French resolution, "it's not going to work."
"I hope it's going to be a more serious effort," he said, adding that "the best scenario would be if it is completed "by some achievements in Lausanne."
Hospital Struck Again
In Syria, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported dozens of overnight airstrikes on eastern Aleppo. It added that clashes are taking place on the northern and southern edges of the city.
The Aleppo Media Center, an activist collective, said the airstrikes killed and wounded a number of people, with some buried under the debris.
Among the areas hit was the eastern Sakhour neighborhood where one of the city's largest hospitals, known as M10, was struck again. It had been hit several times over the past month, putting it out of service.
The Observatory said several people were wounded in the attack while the Aleppo Media Center said the hospital was hit three times on Friday and that a fire broke out afterward at the facility. Ibrahim Alhaj, a member of the Syrian Civil Defense, said the fire was quickly extinguished.
Earlier this week, the Observatory said at least 358 civilians have been killed in eastern Aleppo since the U.S.- and Russian-brokered truce collapsed in September. The U.N. says more than 100 children have been killed in the campaign, which has also included a limited ground offensive.
Doctors Without Borders said three weeks of airstrikes on eastern Aleppo have killed 114 children and wounded 320 others. The international charity said hospitals are reporting that because patients struggle to access medical facilities, some people with easily treatable wounds develop complications or reach the facilities too late.
"The international community has become immune to images of dead children being recovered from the rubble of buildings ravaged by bombs. This has become a daily occurrence," said Carlos Francisco, the Head of Mission for Syria. "All sorts of civilian spaces are being hit; schools are being damaged. The reality is that children die every day in what appears to be a 'kill box'."
The U.N. children's agency said in a statement that rebel shelling of a government neighborhood in Aleppo on Thursday killed four children and wounded three who were on their way to school.
"UNICEF calls on all parties to the conflict to protect civilians and stop attacks on civilian infrastructure, including schools and education facilities, in accordance with their obligations under international humanitarian law," the statement said. "Children should be protected at all times".
In the town of Azaz, north of Aleppo near the Turkish border, amateur videos released on Friday show the aftermath of a blast that targeted rebels and killed at least 17 people.
In one of the videos, a man is seen weeping as he screams the name of a missing man, Mohammed. The video also shows a victim being carried away in a black body bag. Another video shows several bodies lying on a pavement outside what appears to be a hospital. The videos appear genuine and corresponded to other AP reporting of the events depicted.
Near the capital of Damascus, government forces captured the rebel-held area of Deir Khabiyeh, according to state media and the Observatory.
Information for this article was contributed by Bassem Mroue, Zeina Karam, Vivian Salama, Nasser Karimi, Edith M. Lederer, Vladimir Isachenkov and staff members of The Associated Press.
A Section on 10/15/2016