28 children among dozens killed in Syrian military raids on rebel districts

At least 76 people, including 28 children, have been killed and scores injured by Syrian military helicopter raids on insurgent-held districts of Aleppo, the Britain-based opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported yesterday. A domestic opposition group, the Local Co-ordination Committees, said 83 had died. The number could rise because of the shortage of medical supplies and bodies are still being retrieved from collapsed buildings.

Missiles and barrel bombs struck 10 areas, suggesting the beginning of the government’s long-expected campaign to retake the city, Syria’s commercial hub.

Insurgents have warned residents of government-held areas to stay away from official buildings which could be targeted in retaliation for the strikes.

In the industrial city of Adra, northeast of Damascus, fatalities among Alawite and Druze minority communities have risen to 28 after al-Qaeda-linked Islamic State of Iraq and Syria and Jabhat al-Nusra launched attacks on the city.

Appeal
The onslaught on civilians coincided with a $6.5 billion UN appeal for Syria and its neighbours to provide aid for 16 million people. The sum for Syria, the largest ever requested for a single country, was more than half the $12.9 billion needed to sustain 52 million people in 17 countries, said UN emergency relief co-ordinator Valerie Amos. "This is the largest amount we have ever had to request at the start of the year," she said.

The UN seeks $2.3 billion to aid 9.3 million in Syria during 2014. Only 65 per cent of this year’s $1.4 billion appeal has been received.

For countries hosting Syrian refugees – Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey – the UN hopes to raise $4.2 billion in the expectation that the number could soar to 4.1 million during the coming year.

The World Food Programme announced that half Syria’s population is “food insecure” and that it has expanded distribution to more than seven million in Syria and surrounding countries. Agency co-ordinator in Syria Mohannad Hadi said: “One way of slowing the [flow] of refugees into neighbouring countries is by providing essential and urgently needed . . . assistance . . . inside [the] country.”

The International Rescue Committee warned that four out of five Syrians are worried that food could run out as temperatures plunged to below freezing in certain areas of Syria and the price of bread has risen 500 per cent.

Committee president David Miliband said that “starvation is now threatening large parts of the Syrian population.”

The failure of the international community to respond to repeated UN appeals is not the only factor depriving some 250,000 Syrians of aid. The army has laid siege to areas where food and medical supplies are not allowed in while insurgent forces have besieged and blockaded two towns in the north.

The first cargo plane carrying UN aid has reached Hassakeh in northern Syria. The 12-day airlift, based in Iraq’s Kurdish region, will shift 400 tonnes of food and 196kgs of medical supplies, enough to provide for 6,000 Syrian families until the end of this month.