“We have reserves, stores, but Aleppo is home to 326,000 people who are besieged,” Haji Hasan said. A fortnight after President Bashar al-Assad’s forces, with Russian air support, cut the only road into rebel-held Aleppo, it is claimed a water shortage is affecting hospitals. Brita Haji Hasan, leader of the Aleppo city council, said that the situation was deteriorating rapidly and that he believed the rebel-held areas could only hold out for “two to three months” before people started to die in their thousands. The most senior civic leader in the besieged Syrian city of Aleppo has condemned the west for failing to stop Russian airstrikes cutting off the city and warned of a disastrous humanitarian crisis within weeks. Rebel forces entered Aleppo in 2012, dividing it between opposition areas in the east and government-controlled ones in the west.

Source: The Guardian July 23, 2016 23:03 UTC