UNITED NATIONS -- Syria's top diplomat said Saturday at the United Nations that his country is more determined than ever to eliminate "terrorism" from the country.
Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem said his country's belief in military victory is greater now because the army "is making great strides in its war against terrorism" with support from Russia, Iran and Lebanon's Hezbollah fighters. The Syrian government uses the term "terrorism" to refer to all those fighting to overthrow President Bashar Assad, including Western-backed opposition groups.
Al-Moallem accused the "moderate armed opposition" of committing crimes and massacres against Syrians "that are no less barbaric" than those of the Islamic State extremist group and al-Qaida. The Syrian government in turn has been accused by the U.S. and other Western nations of the indiscriminate killing of civilians, dropping bombs filled with chlorine gas as a chemical weapon, and torturing and killing opponents.
The Syrian official addressed the U.N. General Assembly's annual ministerial meeting after frantic but unsuccessful efforts by U.S. and Russian envoys to revive a cease-fire that went into effect Sept. 12 but collapsed in a week after attacks by both sides. The truce was aimed at enabling the delivery of humanitarian aid and paving the way for a resumption of talks between the government and the opposition.
Syria was stepping up its military campaign even as talks were taking place between U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on the sidelines of the U.N. meeting on reviving the cease-fire.
Al-Moallem said the Syrian government remains committed to political negotiations in Geneva under U.N. auspices, but he stressed that any solution must follow two parallel tracks: intensified counterterrorism efforts and an intra-Syrian dialogue that allows Syrians to determine their future "without foreign interference."
He said a political solution should begin "by establishing a government of national unity comprising representatives from the government and the opposition, in all its factions, and tasked with creating a constitution drafting committee."
Once a new constitution is approved by Syrians through a referendum, he said, parliamentary elections should follow, leading to the formation of a new government.
That proposal is contrary to the road map for a Syrian political transition adopted by key nations in Geneva in June 2012 including the five permanent U.N. Security Council members -- the U.S., Russia, China, Britain and France -- that has been the basis of subsequent Geneva talks.
It starts with the establishment of a transitional governing body, vested with full executive powers, and ends with elections, and it requires Assad to relinquish power at some unspecified point.
Al-Moallem made no mention of Assad stepping down as president and envisioned a military victory -- something Russia, the U.S. and the U.N. say is impossible.
"Our belief in victory is even greater now that the Syrian Arab Army is making great strides in its war against terrorism, with the support of the true friends of the Syrian people, notably the Russian Federation, Iran and the Lebanese national resistance," al-Moallem said. He was referring to Lebanon's Shiite Hezbollah militia.
Al-Moallem accused Qatar and Saudi Arabia of spreading "terrorism" in Syria by sending in "mercenaries equipped with the most sophisticated weapons." He also accused Turkey of opening its border "to let in tens of thousands of terrorists from all over the world" and providing them with military and logistical support.
Syria's uprising began in March 2011 with mostly peaceful protests against the Assad family's four-decade rule, but escalated into a civil war after a government crackdown and the rise of an armed insurgency.
Aleppo pounded
As of Saturday, rebel-held parts of the city of Aleppo had come under a blistering wave of airstrikes that residents said was without precedent in the 5½-year conflict that has killed more than 300,000 people and driven half the country's population from their homes. The airstrikes killed dozens, toppled buildings and sent wounded people flooding into poorly equipped clinics.
The U.N. Security Council called an emergency meeting to be held this morning on the escalating attacks, at the request of the United States, Britain and France.
Aid was never delivered to Aleppo, and on Saturday government forces captured an area on the edge of the city, tightening their siege around the rebel-held east.
The U.N. said nearly 2 million people in the city were without running water after the escalation in fighting over the past few days.
Government forces captured the rebel-held Palestinian refugee camp of Handarat as airstrikes pounded eastern Aleppo, killing 52 people, including 11 children and six women, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. The Local Coordination Committees, another monitoring group, said 49 were killed on Saturday alone.
The Observatory said the death toll in Aleppo is expected to rise because many people were in critical condition and rescue workers were still digging through the rubble.
Residents said the latest bombardment was the worst they had seen since rebels captured parts of the city in 2012. Activists reported dozens of airstrikes on Friday.
"Since the beginning of the crisis, Aleppo has not been subjected to such a vicious campaign," said Mohammed Abu Jaafar, a forensics expert based in the city. "Aleppo is being wiped out."
Global reaction was swift and condemned the new Syrian offensive in harsh terms.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon "is appalled by the chilling military escalation" in Aleppo and underlines that the use of indiscriminate weapons including incendiary devices and bunker buster bombs in densely populated areas "may amount to war crimes," his spokesman said, adding that Ban considered it "a dark day for the global commitment to protect civilians."
Kerry called the bombing of Aleppo "beyond the pale," accusing the Syrian government of "laying siege in medieval terms to an entire community." Speaking at Tufts University in Boston, he demanded that Russia help bring peace to Syria instead of "an unacceptable precedent ... for the entire world."
'from paradise to hell'
On Monday, a barrage on an aid convoy in the rebel-held town of Urum al-Kubra drew worldwide condemnation.
U.S. officials blamed Russia for the airstrikes, and Kerry called for the immediate grounding of all warplanes in key areas so aid deliveries could resume safely. Russia balked at that proposal and denied responsibility. It suggested that a U.S. drone might have been culpable.
Survivors recalled the moments leading up to the strike.
Ammar al-Salmo, chief of the rescue group known as the White Helmets, described hearing the familiar hum of a drone overhead as Omar Barakat, the chief of the local Red Crescent, watched workers unload lifesaving cargo at a warehouse in Urum al-Kubra.
"Be careful," al-Salmo warned Barakat. He was only half-joking; too many times, he had seen his ambulances hit by airstrikes as they rushed to help people.
"He just laughed," al-Salmo recalled later. Barakat, he said, was confident that the Syrian government and its Russian allies would not disrupt the 31-truck aid convoy Monday, the first to carry food and supplies to desperate civilians under the cease-fire.
Hours later, Barakat was dead, along with 20 other civilians. Eighteen of the trucks were destroyed, and so was the cease-fire.
"We went from paradise to hell," recalled al-Salmo, who had been drinking tea on his rooftop a few miles away minutes before the attack, enjoying the relative quiet of the partial cease-fire.
About 30 explosions sounded, starting after 7 p.m. and lasting for hours, interviews and documentation show. The blasts created large fireballs over the warehouse and set trucks aflame as helicopters and jets were heard above. A second -- and, some said, a third -- wave hit as rescuers tried to pull out the dead and injured, driving the rescuers back.
The convoy had traveled from government territory, with meticulously extracted permissions, and was marked conspicuously with the logos of the United Nations and the Red Crescent. But it did not, as many such convoys do, have the extra shield of U.N. officials on board, because the Syrian government had blocked them.
Numerous witnesses and monitoring groups said the attack started between 7:12 and 7:50 p.m. and continued in waves for one to three hours. Kevin Kennedy, the United Nations' regional humanitarian coordinator in Amman, Jordan, said it "continued through the night."
Abu Mohammad, who is part of a network that monitors the skies and warns civilians about impending strikes, sent an alert at 7:41 p.m. of a warplane taking off from the Hmeymim air base, a facility that only Russians use, toward Urum al-Kubra. At 7:45 p.m., Abu Mohammad, who spoke on the condition of being identified by his nickname for fear of being targeted because of his work, announced that a Russian-made Su-24 was bound the same way from a different base.
"We saw a whole lot of activity," said another member of the network, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for safety reasons. "It's hard when you've got that much flying around to say with certainty who fired what, but you don't see that kind of intensity of aircraft unless this was coordinated."
Information for this article was contributed by Edith M. Lederer, Joseph Krauss and Bassem Mroue of The Associated Press and by Anne Barnard and Somini Sengupta of The New York Times.
A Section on 09/25/2016