As pictures of a dazed child pulled from the rubble in heavily bombarded rebel-held eastern Aleppo captured the plight of the city’s civilians, Moscow said it was ready to start the first “humanitarian pause” next week. U.N. Special Envoy Staffan de Mistura has long called for a 48-hour halt in fighting each week to allow aid delivery and medical evacuations from both rebel-held eastern and government-controlled western Aleppo. The Syrian opposition has said it wants to see a credible pause in the bloodshed and improved humanitarian aid access before peace talks can resume. “It is not a Russian operation, it has to be a U.N. operation to be a good and credible operation,” he told Reuters. (Additional reporting by Gabriela Baczynska in Brussels and Andreas Rinke in Berlin; Writing by Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by Andrew Roche)

Source: Huffington Post August 18, 2016 16:33 UTC