26 October 2016•Update: 27 October 2016
By Hakan Ceyhan Aydogan
MOSCOW
Russia is ready to halt its airstrikes in Aleppo if civilians leave the opposition-held areas in the province, the country's defense ministry said on Wednesday.
"The Russian and Syrian governments are ready to restart humanitarian truces in Aleppo if the international organizations guarantee they will evacuate civilians and the wounded from the areas controlled by armed groups," ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov told reporters in Moscow.
Hundreds of civilians have reportedly been killed or injured in Russian and Syrian airstrikes since Sept. 19, when the Bashar al-Assad regime announced the end of a week-long truce.
On Friday, Russia’s envoy to the UN in Geneva announced that the “humanitarian pause” in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo had been extended until Oct. 24.
However, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said on Monday that Russia was not willing to prolong its “humanitarian pause” in airstrikes unless opposition groups comply with the agreement.
Ryabkov said: "Nothing of what has been required in the past three days took place, so now the issue of renewing the humanitarian pause is irrelevant.”
Syria has been locked in a vicious civil war since early 2011, when Assad cracked down on pro-democracy protests – which erupted as part of the Arab Spring uprisings – with unexpected ferocity.
Since then, more than a quarter of a million people have been killed and more than 10 million displaced across the war-torn country, according to UN figures.
