The Syrian Ministry of Tourism published a video promoting Aleppo as a tourist site, with the soundtrack of the Game of Thrones theme song and hashtagged #Aleppo_Will_of_Life. It features drone footage of green parks and blue swimming pools in government-held Aleppo.
Elsewhere in Aleppo, an injured, traumatized child cried and clung to a nurse treating him in hospital in a video published by the Syrian American Medical Society (SAMS) on Twitter.
A heartbreaking video of a traumatized toddler at a SAMS hospital in #Aleppo. The baby boy wouldn't let go of the nurse who was treating him pic.twitter.com/bI83Dv2Ql1
— SAMS (@sams_usa) September 30, 2016
The Syrian government, with the help of Russia, is on the offensive in Aleppo with the aim of capturing the whole city that is divided into government- and rebel-held areas after years of war. The rebel-held areas have been under near-constant bombardment since a brief ceasefire crumbled earlier this month.
The United States, who brokered the ceasefire with Russia after months of negotiations, is trying to salvage the truce, and its diplomatic relationship with Moscow.
“We have not definitively suspended our diplomatic relations regarding Syria with Russia,” said Mark Toner, deputy spokesperson for the Department of State in a press briefing in Washington on Friday. “We’re on the verge because we have not yet seen them take the kind of actions that we’re looking to see them take, but we’re not there yet.”
He explained that the stakes are high if the relationship between the two superpowers falls apart, including an escalation of violence in Syria. US Secretary of State John Kerry has held daily phone calls with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov for the last three days.
But behind closed doors, Kerry has reportedly shown his exasperation, with both Moscow and Washington. “We’re trying to pursue the diplomacy, and I understand it’s frustrating. You have nobody more frustrated than we are,” Kerry told a small meeting of Syrian groups at the Dutch Mission to the United Nations on September 22. The New York Times obtained a recording of the meeting.
During the meeting, Kerry said repeatedly that his diplomatic efforts were not being backed by a serious military threat.
Lavrov, in an interview with the BBC, said Russia had proposed coordinating with the US-led coalition in Syria from the beginning from the beginning of its involvement in Syria one year ago, and to separate the Syrian opposition forces from the terrorist groups of Islamic State (ISIS) and the al Qaeda linked al-Nusra, something Lavrov said the US promised to do in December. He accused the US of wanting to use al-Nusra in a scheme to unseat Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
“They still, in spite of many repeated promises and commitments, they still are not able or not willing to do this. And we have more and more reasons to believe that from the very beginning, the plan was to spare Nusra and to keep it, you know, just in case, for plan B or for stage 2 when it would be time to change the regime,” Lavrov said.
AFP infographic showing developments in Syria after one year of Russian engagement.
