REUTERS/Khalil Ashawi
A boy walks past damaged buildings in the northern Syrian rebel-held town of al-Waqf, in Aleppo Governorate, Syria, October 9, 2016.
A large-scale humanitarian crisis has been unfolding for months in Syria's largest city as civilians are trapped in the besieged town, that has been bombed on an almost daily basis for months now, with no way to escape.
"They have been abandoned by the world - the whole world is witnessing the city being destroyed, but nobody is doing anything to stop it," Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) head of mission Carlos Francisco said in a statement. "This is the feeling shared by the 35 doctors left in east Aleppo."
The alarm bell about the situation in the Aleppo is once again being sounded by MSF as over 250,000 people "with no possibility of help or escape," who are constantly bombarded, are now left with 35 doctors as hospitals have consistently been hit during the air strikes - enduring 23 attacks over the last four months.
"First, the surrounding areas were hit, then the roads leading into the city, then hospitals, water supplies, residential neighbourhoods, rescuers' equipment. We are talking about a city exhausted by five years of war, which has received no aid since July, when the siege began - a city that is being devastated, flattened, in front of our eyes," Francisco said.
The city, divided between the eastern part controlled by rebels fighting the authoritarian regime of Bashar al-Assad and the western part controlled by the Syrian army, has been a focal point of the Syrian war as Assad vowed to take back the entire city from the rebels.
The civil war in Syria has been raging on since 2011, and has so far caused the internal displacement of over 8 million people, sent over 4.5 million people fleeing the country, and lead to the death of over 400,000 people.
REUTERS/Abdalrhman Ismail
Smoke rises from Bustan al-Basha neighborhood of Aleppo, Syria, October 5, 2016.
The latest US-Russian initiative to bring about peace in Syria the collapsed last week after one of the most deadly bombings of Aleppo yet.
US Secretary of State, John Kerry, added that the attacks on hospitals in Aleppo were now "way beyond" accidental and last week, the US and French governments called for a war crime investigation of Russian and Syrian air strikes in Aleppo.
Francisco, who has coordinated MSF's Syria projects since January 2015, is based in southern Turkey and in daily contact with the doctors left in Aleppo. He has found that the situation in east Aleppo has hugely deteriorated over the last three weeks, and for more than a year now, MSF has been barred from entering the city.
"What is clear is that we have lost the capacity to help in any major way," Francisco said. "Now, they are basically in need of everything. They are telling us, 'Send whatever you have - sterile gauze or non-sterile - we'll take anything, we need everything'. But in these circumstances, we are powerless to help them."