Syria’s main political opposition has urged the U.S. president to intervene in Syria after 45 displaced civilians were killed by regime shelling on eastern Aleppo on Wednesday.
Vice President of the Syrian National Coalition Abdul Ahad Steifo called upon U.S. President Barack Obama to intervene to stop the massacres being committed by the Assad regime and Russian forces.
“Although he is in the last days of his term in office, we are fully confident in the ability of President Obama, as the head of the world’s sole superpower, to stop these massacres once there is a will to do so,” he said.
Syrian Civil Defense services said that 45 civilians were killed in an artillery barrage by regime forces on a housing area for displaced people in rebel-held eastern Aleppo on Wednesday morning.
The emergency response unit said that dozens more people were wounded in the artillery attack which targeted the Jub al-Qubba neighborhood for the second time in two days. Most of the dead were women and children, it added.
Thousands of residents in east Aleppo have in the past couple of days moved to Jub al-Qubba and other neighborhoods fleeing the regime advance on the rebel-held eastern districts of the city.
Images published by the Civil Defense showed bodies strewn on a debris-filled road in the rebel-held neighborhood.
Steifo stressed that “the killing of dozens of civilians fleeing eastern Aleppo by the Assad regime and Russian forces on Tuesday should prompt friends of the Syrian people, especially the United States, Great Britain and France, to take action to stop this despicable, brutal aggression against our people.”
Action has become absolutely necessary even if it means action should be taken outside the U.N. Security Council, which has been disabled by Russia’s repeated use of its veto power, Steifo said. He added that Russia is a partner of the Assad regime in the shedding of the blood of Syrian civilians.
The people left inside eastern Aleppo are facing certain death as a result of the onslaught. If residents choose to remain inside their neighborhoods they face Russian airstrikes, or regime heavy artillery if they choose to flee for safer areas.
This article was edited by The Syrian Observer. Responsibility for the information and views set out in this article lies entirely with the author
