BEIRUT (AP) – An intensive day of bombing in Syria’s besieged rebel-held Aleppo city left at least 25 people dead, including five children, overwhelming rescue workers who continued a day later Wednesday to search for survivors under the rubble, according to activists and a civil defense spokesman.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Wednesday that Tuesday’s bombings killed 25 people. But the Syrian Civil Defense, a team of first responders in rebel-held areas, and activist media platform Aleppo Media Center put the death toll at 41.
The bombings resumed Tuesday and continued into Wednesday, shattering a relative lull in the nearly month-old intensive aerial campaign from Syrian and Russian warplanes on the stricken territory.
The Observatory said Wednesday at least 358 civilians have been killed in eastern Aleppo since a U.S.-Russian cease-fire collapsed on Sept. 19. The U.N. says over 100 children have been killed in the campaign, which has also included a limited ground offensive.
Syria Civil Defense workers pulled at least one boy alive from under the rubble Tuesday, amid cheers from onlookers in eastern Aleppo’s al-Fardous neighborhood. The boy emerged covered in dust and dazed from the flattened building, grapping his rescuer tightly. His mother survived but remains in critical condition, said Ibrahim al-Haj, a member of the first-responder team, also known as the White Helmets. The boy had lost his father and brother in previous bombings, according to al-Haj.