Staffan de Mistura warns of ‘another Rwanda’ and offers to personally escort Islamist fighters out of city to halt bombing

The whole of rebel-held eastern Aleppo could be destroyed by Christmas if the “cruel, constant” Russian-backed bombing of the Syrian city continues, the UN special envoy for Syria has warned.

In a passionate and personal appeal from Geneva on Thursday, Staffan de Mistura said the scale of human tragedy in the besieged part of the city was huge, and the world needed to avert “another Srebrenica, another Rwanda”.

How has the war affected Aleppo? Aleppo was Syria's most populous city when the civil war arrived in July 2012. Local opponents to Bashar al-Assad seized half the city and for the first time since the uprising began in March 2011, faced attacks from government jets and helicopter gunships. Islamists, mainstream rebels and - for 10 months in 2013 - Isis have had control of the eastern half but the city has remained divided. Four years of war have taken a withering toll on one of the world’s oldest cities, with Russian airstrikes since September 2015 causing intense devastation.

He said he was willing to go personally to eastern Aleppo to escort up to 1,000 Islamist fighters out of the city if it would mean a halt to the bombardment by Russian and Syrian forces.

History would judge Syria and Russia harshly, he added, if they used the presence of about 900 former Jabhat al-Nusra fighters as an “easy alibi” to destroy the besieged area and kill thousands of the 275,000 citizens – approximately 100,000 of whom are children.

“The bottom line is in a maximum of two months, two and a half months, the city of eastern Aleppo at this rate may be totally destroyed, and thousands of Syrian civilians, not terrorists, will be killed, many wounded and thousands will be refugees seeking to escape,” he said.

He added: “The writing on the wall is if this continues to be the pattern, at this rate this cruel, constant use of military activities, bombing, fighting, destruction will continue.”

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In a question directed at the Kremlin, he asked: “Are you really ready to continue this level of fighting and de facto destroy the whole of the ancient city?” He also aimed his message at Jabhat al-Nusra, now known as Jabhat Fatah al-Sham, saying it was “deciding the destiny of 275,000 civilians” by refusing to leave the city.

He added that the fighters’ presence “should not be used as an an easy alibi for the destruction of the city”. He said his personal presence would be a guarantee of their safety, saying all he could offer was his own body.

The UN humanitarian adviser, Jan Egeland, said at least 376 people had been killed and 1,266 wounded in the past two weeks in Aleppo. De Mistura said that two hospitals had been destroyed and a total of 600 patients were in need of medical evacuation.

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De Mistura’s plea came as the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, insisted there were no moderate rebels in Aleppo and claimed the US were using al-Nusra as their “only concrete card” in a negotiation. Speaking to Danish TV, he said there would be no downsizing of the Syrian operations in Aleppo, calling on fighters and their families to leave rebel-held parts of the city or face “their inevitable fate”. The best option, he said, lay in local ceasefires and surrenders.

The Russian military warned the US against attempting to impose constraints on either the Russian or Syrian air force, implying it would shoot down any US coalition plane that attempted to do so.

The Russian defence ministry spokesman, Maj Gen Igor Konashenkov, warned on Thursday that the military would not have time to contact its American counterparts if it saw missiles on course to a target – indicating Russia would strike back without warning should Syrian forces be attacked.

In practice, it seems more likely that the US under the Obama administration would consider further economic sanctions against Russia, rather than direct military force.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Staffan de Mistura says eastern Aleppo is facing total destruction. Photograph: Martial Trezzini/EPA

Meanwhile Syrian government forces reportedly advanced against rebels in Aleppo, making their biggest gains in the city in years. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said loyalist fighters now controlled about half of the Bustan al-Basha district near the centre of the divided metropolis.



“It’s the most important advance for the regime in Aleppo since 2013,” said Observatory’s director, Rami Abdurrahman.

On the diplomatic front, De Mistura said the decision of the US and Russians to suspend bilateral cooperation over Syria was a serious setback. But he insisted the International Syria Support Group, a wider group of countries trying to reach a ceasefire, including its UN-backed humanitarian taskforce, should not be disbanded.

The archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, has become the latest figure to condemn the slaughter in Aleppo, calling it “evil” and “demonic”.

He told ITV News: “What is being done is evil both in the strict theological sense and in the general sense. It is demonic. It’s the absolute contempt for the human spirit. For the dignity of the human being.

“It’s the brushing aside of the poor and the weak and the fragile in a way that is as bad as anything we’ve seen in the last century. It compares with some of the great atrocities of the last century.”

The French foreign minister, Jean-Marc Ayrault, was in Moscow on Thursday to canvass support for a fresh UN resolution banning flights over Aleppo, the resumption of humanitarian aid, and a surveillance mechanism to oversee violations of the truce violations and of international law.

His chances of success are deemed slim. The US and Russia have suspended discussions on a ceasefire as each side accuses the other of bad faith over the collapse of the latest attempt.