Battle of Aleppo

Serbian newspaper Politika reported on Tuesday that the Serbian defence ministry intends to send food, clothes and medicines to Aleppo, where Russian-backed government forces have been fighting against rebels for several months.

Turkey has proposed sending an international aid convoy to Aleppo, the long-besieged Syrian city where around 300,000 people are facing shortages of food, medication and other essential supplies, at a critical meeting held in Swiss city Lausanne with the U.S., Russia and neighboring countries to Syria.

Russia on Oct. 8 vetoed a United Nations draft resolution demanding an end to the bombing of Syria's war-battered city of Aleppo, despite an appeal from France to save the city from destruction.

The foreign ministers of the United States and Russia, the authors of a stillborn cease-fire in Syria, held discussions by phone for the fourth consecutive day on Oct. 1 regarding the bombing campaign in Aleppo that has hit hospitals and water supplies. 

Syrian government forces and rebels fought battles north of Aleppo and in the city center on Sept. 30, a week into a Russian-backed offensive by the Syrian army to take the entire city, while the U.S. and Russia continued blaming each other over the situation in Syria. 

Syrian government forces and their allies attacked the opposition-held sector of Aleppo on several fronts on Sept. 27, the biggest ground assault yet in a massive new military campaign that has destroyed a U.S.-backed cease-fire. 

A nationwide cease-fire brokered by the United States and Russia was mostly holding across Syria yesterday and efforts to deliver badly needed aid to besieged areas including the northern city of Aleppo got cautiously underway. 

The United Nations' special envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, made a plea on May 4 for a halt in fighting in the second city of Aleppo, warning that failure to do so could lead to a "catastrophic" outcome that could send 400,000 people rushing to the border with Turkey.

Rebel fighters launched an assault in Syria's divided northern city of Aleppo on May 3 and fired rockets on a hospital in the latest violence to hit civilians as diplomats struggled to restore an unravelling ceasefire and resurrect peace talks. 

Rebels bombarded government-held areas of Aleppo with rockets on May 3, killing 19 people and hitting a hospital, while also launching a ground assault on army-held positions of the divided city, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.