LONDON -- With military options all but eliminated, the United States and Britain on Sunday said they were considering new sanctions to pressure the Syrian and Russian governments to halt an offensive against rebel-held parts of Aleppo, Syria's largest city.
While the close allies said diplomacy was their primary focus, the tone was tougher than Saturday's message from U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry after he launched a new diplomatic effort to resolve the 5½-year civil war.
"It's easy to say, 'Where is the action?'" Kerry said. "But what is the action?"
"I don't see a big appetite in Europe for people to go to war; we are pursuing diplomacy because those are the tools that we have," he told reporters following talks Sunday in London.
Those talks included diplomats from France, Germany, Italy, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates and the European Union. All oppose Syrian President Bashar Assad's long-term control over his country, and all are angry over a year-old Russian military intervention that has contributed to thousands of deaths and harrowing scenes of destruction in Aleppo.
Kerry said countries have an obligation not to "light a fire" under a conflict that could expand into a larger regional war or one that draws in superpowers against one another. British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson described the use of armed force as a drastic step.
The two appeared more affirmative when it came to the possibility of "ratcheting up" economic pressure on Syria and Russia, as Johnson described it.
He decried the "terrible, medieval siege" of the city, even as he expressed doubt about the ability of Syria and Russia to drive the opposition from Aleppo. More than 10,000 fighters remained in the rebel-held eastern part of the city, Johnson said, as well as a quarter-million trapped civilians.
Johnson called on the U.S. and Europe to make Russia "feel the consequences" of its military campaign.
The West has accused Russia of carrying out the indiscriminate aerial bombing of civilians in Aleppo in support of Assad's forces. Kerry accused Russia of participating in "crimes against humanity on a daily basis," and confirmed the U.S. was studying sanctions in addition to the ones put in place after Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014.
President Vladimir Putin said this month that Russia won't give in to "blackmail and pressure" over its military campaign in Syria and accused the U.S. and its allies of whipping up "anti-Russian hysteria."
President Barack Obama and the Pentagon have made clear their opposition to any U.S. military strikes against Assad's military, though Kerry on Sunday said "President Obama has not taken any option off the table." The U.S. is uneasy with providing more advanced weaponry to the anti-Assad rebels because of their links to extremist groups.
ISIS-held Town Falls
Separately, U.S. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said the northern town of Dabiq had been wrested from the Islamic State militant group by Syrian opposition forces backed by Turkey and the international coalition.
Dabiq held symbolic importance to the Islamic State, Carter said in a statement on Sunday.
"The group carried out unspeakable atrocities in Dabiq, named its English-language magazine after the town, and claimed it would be the site of a final victory for the so-called caliphate," Carter said.
The Islamic State, also known as ISIS, believed that Crusaders and an army of the Muslim caliphate would fight at Dabiq and herald doomsday.
"Instead, its liberation gives the campaign to deliver ISIL a lasting defeat new momentum in Syria," Carter added, using an alternate name for the Islamic State.
Fighters put up "minimal" resistance in defending the town, according to a commander of the Syrian opposition Hamza Brigade. The fighters then withdrew south to al-Bab, which remains under Islamic State control.
Saif Abu Bakr said some 2,000 opposition fighters pushed into Dabiq with tank and artillery support from the Turkish army. The commander said the Islamic State left the town heavily mined.
Southwest of Dabiq, Syrian government forces pounded rebel-held districts in the contested city of Aleppo, culminating in a devastating airstrike on a residential building in the Qaterji neighborhood late in the evening that killed at least 25 people, according to the Civil Defense search-and-rescue outfit. Spokesman Ibrahim Alhaj said some families remain trapped under the rubble.
The Qaterji attack brought the death toll to 49 from strikes on opposition-run eastern Aleppo on Sunday, according to Al Haj.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights group, which monitors the conflict through local contacts, put the toll from the Qaterji attack at no fewer than 15 civilian fatalities, and Sunday's tally for the eastern portion of the city at 31 civilians.
Turkey began intervening in the Syrian war in August to clear the border area of Islamic State fighters and U.S.-backed Syrian Kurdish forces linked to Turkey's own outlawed Kurdish insurgency. The Turkish government considers both to be terrorist groups.
Suicide bombers have targeted Turks in response. Three Turkish police were killed Sunday when a suicide bomber blew himself up during a raid against suspected Islamic State members near the Syrian border. Nine others were wounded, an official said.
In a separate explosion, a man suspected of being responsible for an Islamic State suicide bomber cell in Gaziantep blew himself up about 12 miles away in another district of the city, provincial governor Ali Yerlikaya said in a televised statement. No one else was killed or wounded in the second blast.
Earlier, police received a tip about a group of Islamic State militants hiding in a house in the city's Sahinbey district and launched an operation to apprehend them. A militant blew himself up when he realized he couldn't escape. Three police officers were killed, while five police officers and four civilians were wounded, Yerlikaya said.
News reports initially said that more than one suicide bomber was involved in the first explosion.
The governor said the police raid followed intelligence that the group could be planning an attack on an Alevi cultural association in the city. The Alevis are an offshoot of Shia Islam and are the largest religious group in Turkey after Sunnis. The Islamic State regards Alevis as heretics.
And near Syria's border with Jordan at a camp for displaced Syrians, a resident said Sunday night that an explosion went off at a nearby militia checkpoint, leading to unconfirmed reports of casualties.
Hala Akhbar, a website linked to the Jordanian military, also reported the explosion.
Jordan has been on edge since a June car bomb attack launched from the Rukban area killed seven members of the Jordanian border guard. Jordan sealed the bdorder in response, cutting off vital aid from some 75,000 Syrians stranded in the area.
The displaced Syrians live in makeshift camps between two parallel earthen berms, that mark the frontier.
The Rukban resident spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution from factions in Syria's civil war.
Information for this article was contributed by Bradley Klapper, Philip Issa, Albert Aji, Zeynep Bilginsoy, Omar Akour and Suzan Fraser of The Associated Press; and by Andrew Atkinson of Bloomberg News.
A Section on 10/17/2016