Middle-East | Syrian pro-government forces press attack on city of Aleppo

Syrian government forces pressed their assault yesterday on the eastern, rebel-held neighborhoods of Aleppo, opposition activists said, while state media reported that rebel shelling of government-controlled part of the city left six dead, including two students killed at a university campus.
Also yesterday, activists raised the death toll from a suicide bombing at a Kurdish wedding in the northeastern city of Hasakah the previous night to at least 34 dead. The attack was claimed by the Islamic State group, which said its fighter had targeted a gathering of a Kurdish political party, without mentioning a wedding celebration.
Issam Amin, a local media activist, said a teenager detonated an explosive vest when he was stopped by men at the entrance of the wedding’s reception. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which tracks the civil war through a network of activists on the ground, said 11 of the fatalities were children.
The attacks underscore the chaos of the Syrian conflict. The civil war has lately focused around Aleppo, where the situation deteriorated considerably since the collapse of a U.S.-­Russia-brokered cease-fire two weeks ago. There are several other fronts open between rebels and the government across the country, while Islamic State militants continue to stage large-scale attacks against all sides of the conflict.
Yesterday’s shelling on the city university’s School of Sciences killed two students, according to the Observatory while state media put the toll at six dead and 47 wounded.
Rebels said pro-government forces were attacking the city from the south in a bid to penetrate its opposition-controlled areas, where the U.N. estimates 275,000 people are trapped in a government siege. The Islamic Front rebel coalition said on Twitter that its factions repelled an advance on the Sheikh Saeed neighborhood.
The Observatory said the government offensive is accompanied by airstrikes on the contested neighborhoods. The monitoring group says 420 civilians have been killed in and around Aleppo since the collapse of the cease-fire, mainly in the rebel-held east of the embattled city.
Health facilities and hospitals have come under repeated attack in the offensive, prompting global outcry.
In Geneva, the U.N. human rights chief decried an unfolding “calamity” in Aleppo and condemned the Security Council for scuttling resolutions that would prohibit war crimes.
Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein said the Security Council should adopt rules to limit veto use by its five permanent members in cases of war crimes, crimes against humanity, or genocide. The U.S., France, Britain, as well as several U.N. officials have warned that Russia and the Syrian government’s actions in the war could amount to war crimes.
International efforts to end the fighting have been dealt another serious blow on Monday, after the United States suspending direct contacts with Russia on halting the war in Syria, underscoring the deep mistrust between the two powers. AP