Increasingly intensive Russian airstrikes are pushing tens of thousands of Syrians from the city of Aleppo towards the Turkish border, Turkey’s prime minister, Ahmet Davutoğlu has said, predicting a fresh exodus even as Europe struggles to respond to the existing refugee crisis.
After a week of the most intensive bombardment of the five-year war, opposition forces in northern Syria say they are losing their grip on Aleppo, with forces loyal to the Syrian leader, Bashar al-Assad, in control of most of the countryside immediately to the north. Davutoğlu said up to 70,000 people were fleeing the area, and the city was threatened with a “siege of starvation”.
Speaking at a conference in London on Thursday that raised more than $10bn (£6.85bn) in aid pledges, the US secretary of state, John Kerry, called on the regime and its supporters to halt their bombardment of opposition-held areas, saying they “clearly signalled the intention to seek a military solution rather than enable a political one”.
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