‘We will not let Aleppo become another Rwanda’: UN envoy likens Syrian civil war to genocide

Rebel-held eastern Aleppo could be “totally destroyed” by year’s end if a campaign of ferocious bombardment of the Syrian city by Russia and Syria continues, a senior UN envoy warned on Thursday. Staffan de Mistura’s remarks coincided with Moscow issuing a pointed warning to the US against carrying out air strikes on areas controlled by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s government.

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Speaking at a news conference in Geneva, de Mistura – the UN’s special envoy for Syria – also appealed to fighters from an al-Qaeda-linked faction to depart from opposition-held areas, saying their presence provided an “easy alibi” for aerial attacks to continue. The northern Syrian city has been pounded for two weeks by punishing air strikes that have killed nearly 300 people, many of them children.

Desperate conditions prevail in rebel-controlled neighbourhoods that have been targeted by Russian and Syrian aircraft, according to witnesses, monitors and aid groups. Medical centres and civil-defence headquarters have been struck repeatedly, with the city’s few remaining doctors struggling daily to treat gruesome injuries. Food is in short supply. Whole families have been buried under the rubble of collapsed buildings.

Using some of his strongest language since the breakdown of the ceasefire, de Mistura likened the growing slaughter in Aleppo to genocidal killings in the mid-1990s in the Balkans and Africa.

“There is only one thing we are not ready to do – be passive, resign ourselves to another Srebrenica, another Rwanda,” he said.

Directly addressing fighters of the Front for the Conquest of Syria, which formerly called itself the Nusra Front, the UN envoy urged them to leave the city to reduce the peril faced by eastern Aleppo’s estimated 275,000 civilians.

“If you decide to leave with dignity … I am personally ready physically to accompany you,” the envoy declared.