- Russia sets brief cease-fire for Aleppo as strikes kill 36
The death toll from the invasion of Godogodo in Jema’a Local Government Area of Kaduna State, between last Saturday and Sunday, has risen from 20 to 40, according to sources from Southern Kaduna Peoples Unions, SOKAPU, the umbrella body of the 67 tribal groupings of Southern Kaduna.
However, Kaduna State Police spokesman, ASP Usman Aliyu, told Vanguard that he had not been informed of any figure higher than the Sunday figure of 20, but agreed that the casualty figure could be higher.
Meanwhile, a mob attack on herdsmen in Kaduna left no fewer than 14 persons “hacked and burnt” to death.
A commercial bus driver, Adamu Aliyu, told newsmen yesterday: “I was returning from Plateau State with eight passengers, all of them Fulani herders. My bus broke down in Kaduna State, so I left it to go search for a mechanic. “While I was away, a mob surrounded the vehicle and forcibly brought out the eight passengers. They hacked them to death, dumped them in the vehicle and set it ablaze.
“Another vehicle was also attacked, when it stopped to refuel and all the six people were burnt to death along with the car.”
Aliyu said a riot broke out in the streets, with soldiers and policemen finally intervening to contain the carnage. Casualties figure On the casualty figures, following the invasion of Godogodo, a youth leader, who did not want his name mentioned, said: “On Sunday, we were able to get 20 corpses.
“But after the attackers were chased out this morning (yesterday), we went into the town and recovered badly burnt corpses. “We retrieved corpses that were so badly burnt that you would not know if they were males or females. We now have about 40 dead persons. There could be more, because we are still searching.”
A statement by SOKAPU, through its leader, Dr. Musa Solomon, in Abuja, yesterday, read in part: “The entire people of Southern Kaduna have been totally neglected by the authorities at the Federal and state levels and left to be destroyed by enemies.” It called on the Federal Government and Kaduna State government to set up permanent security formations in the area to curtail “the senseless killings.”
In the meantime, Russian and Syrian forces will halt hostilities for eight hours in the eastern districts of Aleppo, Russia’s military announced on Monday, a day on which opposition activists said their airstrikes killed at least 36 people, including several children, in and around the divided city.
The two militaries will observe a “humanitarian pause” between 8 a.m. and 4 p.m. on Oct. 20 to allow civilians and militants safe passage out of the city, Lt. Gen. Sergei Rudskoi of Russia’s general staff said in Moscow. Militants, the wounded and sick would be allowed to evacuate to the neighboring rebel-held province of Idlib.
U.N. humanitarian officials have pleaded with combatants to observe weekly 48-hour cease-fires to allow humanitarian relief into the city’s besieged eastern districts, but Russian and Syrian forces have only escalated their aerial and ground assault on the rebel-held areas in recent weeks. The airstrikes have claimed hundreds of lives, wounded many, flattened apartment buildings and laid waste to the already crippled medical sector.
Russia’s U.N. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin told reporters at U.N. headquarters in New York that the eight-hour pause was a unilateral halt to fighting. A 48-hour or 72-hour cease-fire “will require some sort of mutual arrangement,” he said.
Russian and Syrian leaders are now capitalizing on a proposal made by the U.N.’s envoy earlier this month to allow al-Qaida-linked militants to leave in exchange for peace and local administration for the eastern districts.
Rebels in the east, along with many residents, spurned the proposition, citing their distrust of the government side. And Russia vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution mandating an immediate cease-fire.
Russia’s Churkin said that at a meeting Saturday co-chaired by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, foreign ministers from Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar said they would work to separate moderate opposition groups from the former al-Qaida affiliate once known as the Nusra Front in rebel-held eastern Aleppo.
Military experts from all these countries were scheduled to meet Monday, he said.
If the separation succeeds — which is a key Russian and Syrian demand — there are two options, Churkin said. Nusra fighters must leave Aleppo or they will be defeated, he said.
Churkin said “the understanding” reached at Saturday’s meeting in Lausanne, Switzerland, is that once Nusra is gone the moderate opposition and the Syrian government will agree on a cease-fire to end the bloodshed.
U.S. State Department spokesman Mark Toner, speaking to reporters in Washington, noted that the people of Aleppo “have been subjected to near constant bombardment and air strikes” that have killed many civilians and leveled much of the city’s infrastructure in an effort “to starve out and to drive out the opposition and civilians.”
“If there is actually an eight-hour pause in the unremitting suffering of the people of Aleppo, that would be a good thing. But frankly, it’s a bit too little, too late,” Toner said.
Monday’s Russian announcement did not include any promises of an extended cease-fire or local administration. It followed a bloody day of airstrikes on rebel-held districts in and around Aleppo.
At least 23 people were killed in airstrike that also wounded dozens in the village of Oweijel, just west of Aleppo, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Another monitoring group, the Local Coordination Committees, said the air raid was carried out by Russian warplanes and put the death toll at 30.
More than a dozen people were also killed in the Marjeh neighborhood in eastern Aleppo. The Aleppo Media Center, an activist collective, said those killed included 11 people with the same family name of Qabs ranging from a six-week-old baby girl to a 25-year-old man.
The Observatory said at least 50 civilians, including 18 children, were killed in airstrikes on the eastern part of the city in the 24 hours before the Russian announcement.
Monday’s airstrikes coincided with the launch in neighboring Iraq of a major operation by Iraqi and Kurdish forces, backed by the U.S.-led coalition, to retake the northern city of Mosul from the Islamic State group. There have been concerns the government in Damascus could use the timing of the Mosul offensive to press its onslaught in Aleppo while world attention is diverted to developments in Iraq.
Also Monday, Syrian state media claimed 49 rebels were killed and wounded in fighting in the neighborhoods of Sheikh Saeed and Shurfa on the southern edges of Aleppo.
In the nearby province of Idlib, a U.S.-led coalition drone struck a car in the provincial capital that carries the same name, killing all inside, according to the Observatory and a jihadi official. It was not immediately clear who was in the vehicle, but such attacks have previously targeted officials with al-Qaida’s affiliate in Syria, known as Fatah al-Sham Front.
The Observatory said the attack targeted a faction commander. An official with Fatah al-Sham Front, formerly known as Nusra Front, said all those in the car were “martyred.” The man, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media, said it was not clear if members of his group were targeted.
Vanguard with additional report from MSN