Tag Archives: Death

With Social Media ‘we could have saved more lives’ in disasters

Members of Sri Lankan military rescue team work at the site of a landslide at Elangipitiya village in Aranayaka

By Amantha Perera

ARANAYAKE, Sri Lanka (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – For the first 48 hours after a huge landslide wiped out his hometown of Aranayake and buried 220 families, Prabath Wedage was on his mobile phone constantly.

“I have not been off the phone for five minutes,” said Wedage, who has been trying to coordinate consignments of relief supplies for 1,700 displaced people in 13 emergency shelters, including Rajagiri School, where he normally works.

In this devastated community – as in many disaster-hit places – the ubiquitous mobile phone and its social media apps are becoming a vital tool for relief and rescue workers, officials and families to share and gather information and keep in touch.

As Sri Lanka is hit with more disasters, from droughts to floods to landslides, making the most of the tools will be key curbing losses, experts say.

“We could have saved more lives if we had used these properly,” Wedage told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

He noted that it was only after last week’s landslide, which followed three days of incessant rain, that many residents begun to use social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter to share disaster-related information.

But government agencies dealing with disaster management also have been slow to adopt social media as a tool, experts say.

NO FACEBOOK, NO TWITTER

The country’s Disaster Management Centre, the main government agency dealing with disasters, does not have an active Facebook page or Twitter account. It relies on daily or twice-daily fax updates and press releases to media.

It has the capacity to send text messages to all mobile phone subscribers in the island, but has rarely used that facility, according to Pradeep Koddiplli, a spokesman for the center.

The same is the case with the Meteorological Department, which has made its daily updates on its website more detailed, but is yet to get on to social media or use text messaging.

“We have looked into this, but we have to devise a mechanism that is tested and proven,” said Lal Chandrapala, head of Meteorological Department.

For now, Wedage said, people looking for quick information during disasters “have to wait until a TV channel or a radio station broadcasts these updates, and that is too late to save any lives. We need live updates.”

Others agencies, however, are already finding the value of turning to social media. As Sri Lanka was hit by 355 millimeters (14 inches) of rain last week, the Sri Lanka Red Cross (SLRC) relied heavily on its Twitter and Facebook platforms to get disaster-related information out.

In fact it was a SLRC tweet on the morning of May 19 that first alerted the nation to the enormity of the disaster. The tweet said 220 families were buried in the Aranayake landslide, while government officials balked at confirming a missing figure even 72 hours after the disaster.

The SLRC has also used social media to put out weather alerts, disaster warnings and relief and rescue information.

The organization’s aggressive push into social media has happened in part because of the lack of any other effective public warning system, said Mahieash Johnney, SLRC’s communications manager.

“In Sri Lanka we do not have a proper dissemination mechanism to reach people when it comes to natural disasters,” he said.

APPS TO THE RESCUE

Other smaller organizations also have taken to social media to give live updates and information during extreme weather.

Road.lk,, for instance, is a home-grown, user-fed information channel on road conditions, normally used to help drivers avoid traffic jams.

During the recent heavy rain, its Twitter feed and mobile app worked as a conduit for hundreds of bits of information aimed to help people deal with flooding and other problems, its creator Raditha Dissanayake told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

“Even this morning there were tweets telling people to get onto their roofs and wave blankets because rescue helicopters would be passing overhead. It’s unlikely that these people have access to radio or television but if their mobiles are still on, they can receive this information,” he said of the service, which has 22,000 Twitter followers.

PickMe, a local taxi app, also has introduced a flood relief button that allows users to donate flood-related relief material, and an SOS button that those trapped in flood waters can use to mark their location.

With no national media organizations providing constant live updates during the recent heavy rain, Roar.lk, a local current affairs website, began a live blog, while another, Yamu.lk, started a “How to help” page.

Road.lk’s Dissanayake feels that if such efforts could be better coordinated – preferably by a government body or large agency like the Sri Lanka Red Cross – they could be more effective and share key data.

“We believe that the data that we collect is quite useful to rescue effort organizers and we hope that we will be able to better coordinate with them in the future,” he said.

Johnney of the Sri Lanka Red Cross thinks it’s time public authorities harnessed the power of social media in their disaster management efforts.

“During the floods these few days, we have seen the power of social media,” he said. “When we needed to collect some items for flood relief, we just posted one message on Facebook and Twitter requesting donations. Within few hours, we had over 300 people at our headquarters.”

(Reporting by Amantha Perera; editing by Laurie Goering :; Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, climate change, women’s rights, trafficking and property rights. Visit http://news.trust.org/climate)

Egypt finds human remains and belongings from plane crash at sea

Relatives of the victims of the missing EgyptAir flight MS804 hold an absentee funeral prayer in a mosque nearby Cairo airport, in Cairo

By Ahmed Aboulenein

CAIRO (Reuters) – Egypt said on Friday its navy had found human remains, wreckage and the personal belongings of passengers floating in the Mediterranean, confirmation that an EgyptAir jet had plunged into the sea with 66 people on board.

President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi offered condolences for those on board, amounting to Egypt’s official acknowledgement of their deaths, although there was still no explanation of why the Airbus had crashed.

“The Egyptian navy was able to retrieve more debris from the plane, some of the passengers’ belongings, human remains, and plane seats,” the Civil Aviation Ministry said in a statement.

The navy was searching an area about 290 km (180 miles) north of the port city of Alexandria, just south of where the signal from the plane was lost early on Thursday.

There was no sign of the bulk of the wreckage, or of a location signal from the “black box” flight recorders.

EgyptAir Chairman Safwat Moslem told state television that the current radius of the search zone was 40 miles (64 km), giving an area of 5,000 sq miles (13,000 sq km), but that it would be expanded as necessary.

A European satellite spotted a 2 km-long oil slick in the Mediterranean, about 40 km southeast of the aircraft’s last known position, the European Space Agency said.

Egyptian Prime Minister Sherif Ismail said that it was too early to rule out any cause for the crash. The aviation minister said a terrorist attack was more likely than a technical failure.

Although suspicion pointed to Islamist militants who blew up another airliner over Egypt seven months ago, no group had claimed responsibility more than 36 hours after the disappearance of flight MS804, an Airbus A320 flying from Paris to Cairo.

Jihadists have been fighting Egypt’s government since Sisi toppled an elected Islamist leader in 2013. In October, the Islamic State group claimed responsibility for blowing up a Russian airliner that exploded after taking off from an Egyptian tourist resort. Russian investigators blamed a bomb smuggled on board.

TOURISM DEVASTATED

That crash devastated Egypt’s tourist industry, one of the main sources of foreign exchange for a country of 80 million people, and another similar attack would crush hopes of it recovering.

Three French investigators and a technical expert from Airbus arrived in Cairo early on Friday, airport sources said.

Officials from a number of U.S. agencies told Reuters that a U.S. review of satellite imagery so far had not produced any signs of an explosion. They said the United States had not ruled out any possible causes for the crash, including mechanical failure, terrorism or a deliberate act by the pilot or crew.

The plane vanished just as it was moving from Greek to Egyptian airspace control. Greek Defence Minister Panos Kammenos said it had swerved radically and plunged from 37,000 feet to 15,000 before vanishing from Greek radar screens.

Ultra-hardline Islamists have targeted airports, airliners and tourist sites in Europe, Egypt, Tunisia and other Middle Eastern countries over the past few years.

Khaled al-Gameel, head of crew at EgyptAir, said the pilot, Mahamed Saeed Ali Shouqair, had 15 years’ experience and was in charge of training and mentoring younger pilots.

“He comes from a pilot family; his uncle was a high-ranking pilot at EgyptAir and his cousin is also a pilot,” Gameel said. “He was very popular and was known for taking it upon himself to settle disputes any two colleagues were having.”

A Facebook page that appeared to be Shouqair’s showed no signs of Islamist sympathies. It included criticism of the Muslim Brotherhood, repostings of articles supporting President Sisi and pictures of Shouqair wearing aviator sunglasses.

The aircraft was carrying 56 passengers, including one child and two infants, and 10 crew. They included 30 Egyptian and 15 French nationals, along with citizens of 10 other countries. The plane had made scheduled flights to Tunisia and Eritrea on Wednesday before arriving in Paris from Cairo.

(Writing by Lincoln Feast, Peter Graff and Kevin Liffey; editing by David Stamp and Peter Millership)

Hopes fade for over 130 feared buried in Sri Lanka landslides

A trishaw is seen stuck in the mud at Elangipitiya village in Aranayaka, Sri Lanka May 19, 2016.

By Ranga Sirilal

ARANAYAKA, Sri Lanka (Reuters) – Hopes faded on Thursday for the survival of about 130 people trapped under the mud and rubble of two landslides in Sri Lanka, as heavy rain hampered rescue operations and the death toll from the disaster rose to 58.

Days of torrential rains have forced around 300,000 people from their homes across the island nation, official data showed. Thirty bodies have been retrieved at the landslide sites.

That figure is likely to rise sharply as authorities battling muddy conditions begin to give up hope of reaching 132 people believed to be trapped beneath the landslides.

“I don’t think there will be any survivors,” Major General Sudantha Ranasinghe, the officer in charge of the rescue operation, told Reuters.

“There are places where the mud level is up to 30 feet. We will keep going until we can recover the maximum.”

Rescue efforts have focused on the town of Aranayaka, 100 km (60 miles) northeast of the capital, Colombo, where three villages with at least 66 houses were buried late on Tuesday in the central district of Kegalle.

Military officials used hoes and shovels to shift mud as they scrambled to find survivors amid heavy rain that made walking in the hilly terrain difficult.

Material from destroyed homes littered the area, including mud-swathed dog cages and water tanks, while a three-wheeler was seen partially buried.

The military pulled three bodies and parts of another two from rubble at the site of the second landslide that buried 16 people, Ranasinghe said.

H.P. Kamalawathi, 41, said she is still looking for her mother and two elder sisters, who were buried on Tuesday.

“We may get only the dead bodies,” the mother of two said as tears rolled down her cheeks. She and her family had sought safety in a nearly Buddhist temple.

“We can’t take any chance. We will dig and see,” Disaster Management Minister Anura Priyadharshana Yapa told reporters in Colombo after briefing diplomats and international bodies. Sri Lanka is seeking assistance to deal with the worst landslides in its history.

Health officials said they are monitoring for water-borne disease outbreaks while Yapa said the government has sought foreign aid in the form of motors, boats and purifying tablets.

Aid agencies in Colombo canvassed for boats to rescue hundreds of people trapped by rising river waters. Disaster management authorities said around 300,000 people displaced across the country by the disaster had been sent to 610 safe locations.

Troops also used boats and helicopters in rescue operations. The torrential rains since Sunday have caused floods and landslides in nineteen of the country’s 25 districts.

Flooding and drought are cyclical in Sri Lanka, which is battered by a southern monsoon between May and September, while a northeastern monsoon runs from December to February.

(Additional reporting and writing by Shihar Aneez; Editing by Catherine Evans)

Sri Lanka’s torrential rains drive more than 130,000 from homes

People walk through a flooded road after they moved out from their houses in Biyagama

COLOMBO (Reuters) – Flash floods and landslides in Sri Lanka, triggered by more than three days of heavy rain, have forced more than 130,000 people from their homes and killed at least 11, disaster officials said on Tuesday.

Troops have launched rescue operations in inundated areas of the Indian Ocean island, with boats and helicopters pulling more than 200 people trapped in the northwestern coastal district of Puttalam to safety, officials said.

“This is the worst torrential rain we have seen since 2010,” said Pradeep Kodippili, a spokesman for the disaster management center. Nineteen of Sri Lanka’s 25 districts have been hit.

Heavy rains have also struck the neighboring Indian states of Tamil Nadu and Kerala. More than 100 houses were damaged in coastal Kerala and about 50 families had been shifted to a relief camp in the state capital, Thiruvananthapuram, a state official said.

The weather department has forecast heavy rains across Tamil Nadu over the next two days and warned fishermen not to go out to sea.

Flooded roads and fallen trees led to traffic jams in the Sri Lankan capital, Colombo. Trains were halted as water submerged railway tracks, officials said.

Flooding and drought are cyclical in Sri Lanka, which is battered by a southern monsoon between May and September, while a northeastern monsoon runs from December to February.

(Reporting by Ranga Sirilal; Writing by Shihar Aneez; Editing by Nick Macfie)

Car Bomb Baghdad’s Sadr City kills 52

People gather at the scene of a car bomb attack in Baghdad's mainly Shi'ite district of Sadr City

By Kareem Raheem

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – A car bomb claimed by Islamic State in a Shi’ite Muslim district of Baghdad killed at least 52 people and wounded more than 78 others on Wednesday, Iraqi police and hospital sources said, the largest attack inside the city for months.

Security has gradually improved in the Iraqi capital, which was the target of daily bombings a decade ago, but violence directed against the security forces and Shi’ite civilians is still frequent. Large blasts sometimes set off reprisal attacks against the minority Sunni community.

The fight against Islamic State, which seized about a third of Iraq’s territory in 2014, has exacerbated a long-running sectarian conflict in Iraq mostly between Sunnis and the Shi’ite majority that emerged after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. Such violence threatens to undermine U.S.-backed efforts to dislodge the militant group

Wednesday’s attack in Sadr City could also intensify pressure on Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi to resolve a political crisis that has crippled the government for more than a month.

A pickup truck packed with explosives went off at rush hour near a beauty salon in a bustling market. Many of the victims were women including several brides who appeared to be getting ready for their weddings, the sources said.

The bodies of two men said to be grooms were found in an adjacent barber shop. Wigs, shoes and children’s toys were scattered on the ground outside. At least two cars were destroyed in the explosion, their parts scattered far from the blast site.

Rescue workers stepped through puddles of blood to put out fires and remove victims. Smoke was still rising from several shops hours after the explosion as a bulldozer cleared the burnt-out chassis of the vehicle used in the blast.

Islamic State said in a statement circulated online by supporters that it had targeted Shi’ite militia fighters gathered in the area.

Iraqi forces backed by airstrikes from a nearly two-year-old U.S.-led campaign have driven the group back in the western province of Anbar and are preparing for an offensive to retake the northern city of Mosul. But the militants are still able to strike outside territory they control.

The ultra-hardline Sunni jihadist group, which considers Shi’ites apostates, has claimed recent attacks across the country as well as a twin suicide bombing in Sadr City in February that killed 70 people.

(Additional reporting by Saif Hameed and Ali Abdelaty in CAIRO; Writing by Stephen Kalin; Editing by Ralph Boulton)

Large Tornado hits south of Oklahoma City, two dead

OKLAHOMA CITY (Reuters) – A large and violent tornado hit an area south of Oklahoma City on Monday, causing at least two deaths and reducing at least three homes to splinters, authorities said.

The hardest-hit areas were about 70 to 80 miles southeast of Oklahoma City, where a tornado reported to be more than a mile wide ripped through the area.

One person was killed in Garvin County, about 60 miles south of Oklahoma City, when a home was destroyed by a twister, an emergency official said. Another person was killed near the town of Connerville, about 110 miles south of Oklahoma City, the Johnston County Sheriff’s Office said.

The National Weather Service described that twister as large and destructive, warning people: “You are in a life-threatening situation.”

At least one other tornado was reported to have hit Oklahoma, the service said. Local news showed photographs of two of the destroyed homes by the twisters.

The National Weather Service issued a tornado watch for large parts of southern Oklahoma into western Arkansas. It also said two tornados have been reported in Nebraska.

(Reporting by Heide Brandes in Oklahoma City, Jon Herskovitz in Austin, Texas, and Eric M. Johnson in Seattle; Editing by Sandra Maler)

China landslide death toll climbs to 34

Paramilitary policemen search for missing people at the site of a landslide in Sanming

BEIJING (Reuters) – The death toll in a landslide in China’s southeastern Fujian province has risen to 34, with four people still missing, state media said on Monday.

The landslide, triggered on Sunday by heavy rain, hit a hydroelectric power station that was under construction in Fujian’s Taining County. President Xi Jinping had demanded that local officials step up rescue efforts.

Persistent rain has made rescue work more difficult, Xinhua said. It earlier said 22 bodies had been found.

In December, a landslide in the southern city of Shenzhen buried 77 people. The government has blamed breaches of construction safety rules for that disaster and a number of officials have been arrested.

Sunday’s landslide is the latest accident to have raised questions about China’s industrial safety standards and lack of oversight over years of rapid economic growth.

(Reporting by Michael Martina; Editing by Alison Williams)

‘No Boots on the Ground’ has its limits as U.S. Navy Seal killed in Iraq

U.S. Navy Warfare Operator 1st Class Charles Keating IV, 31, of San Diego. U.S. Navy via Reuters

By Isabel Coles

TEL ASQOF, Iraq (Reuters) – A pickup truck races toward a burning village in northern Iraq, slamming to a halt behind an armored convoy that forms the only barrier between U.S. forces and Islamic State.

“We are fighting alongside our American brothers,” says the Kurdish fighter filming the scene, shouting to be heard over the sound of gunfire and explosions on the outskirts of Tel Asqof.

The clip, purportedly filmed on Tuesday during a fierce battle in which a U.S. Navy SEAL was killed, records the United States’ deepening involvement in the nearly two-year-old war against the jihadist militants.

Loath to become mired in another conflict overseas, the White House has insisted there will be no American “boots on the ground” in Iraq, instead deploying hundreds of troops to “advise and assist” local forces.

But footage of the firefight shown to Reuters by the Kurdish forces who filmed it, along with the accounts of others who took part, show how easily that distinction can blur.

The exact circumstances of Petty Officer First Class Charles Keating’s death remain unclear. Kurdish officials say he was hit by a sniper and evacuated by helicopter within the hour, but died of his wounds.

He is the third U.S. serviceman killed in direct combat with Islamic State since a U.S.-led coalition launched a campaign in 2014 to “degrade and destroy” the insurgent group.

U.S. forces then withdrew, according to Kurdish fighters involved in the battle, leaving an armored Toyota Landcruiser by the side of the road, its tyros flat.

SIGNS OF BATTLE

The armor was not penetrated, but the outer shell of the vehicle bears the marks of an intense firefight: a hole punched through the door by a rocket-propelled grenade and shattered glass where bullets hit the windshield.

Spent casings were still strewn around the car on Wednesday when Reuters visited the village, 28 km (17 miles) north of Mosul. In the nearby grass lay an empty packet of bandages “for treatment of moderate hemhorrage”.

A U.S. military spokesman said Keating was part of a “quick reaction force” called in after American advisers got caught up in the firefight.

Kurdish fighters said a small team of five or six U.S. advisers had been stationed in Tel Asqof, often visiting the front line around 3.5 km (2.2 miles) away and assisting with reconnaissance and air strike coordination.

“It is the first time they fight with us on the ground,” said Wahid Kovali, the head of the force that battled alongside the Americans. “They were heroic.”

It was Islamic State’s largest attack in months against Kurdish peshmerga forces, who are considered the coalition’s most trusted and effective ally in Iraq and have cleared large areas in the north with the help of air strikes.

Close coordination with the coalition means Islamic State is rarely able to breach peshmerga defenses, which stretch several hundred kilometers in an arc around the north and east of Mosul – by far the largest city in the militants’ self-proclaimed caliphate.

Early on Tuesday, however, the militants advanced from the village of Batnaya and blasted through the peshmerga positions, bringing a portable metal bridge to cross a defensive trench.

PICKUPS AND HUMVEES

From there they traversed open fields to Tel Asqof in a convoy including pickup trucks mounted with anti-aircraft guns, a bulldozer reinforced with metal plates and at least two Humvees, the charred remains of which could be seen inside the village.

“Daesh (Islamic State) came from here,” said a fighter named Adel, pointing down a street where flies converged on the splayed corpses of three militants.

Spreading out through Tel Asqof, the insurgents took up positions in houses, firing at the Americans on the outskirts of the village.

Craters in the asphalt mark where suicide bombers, some driving cars, blew themselves up as Kurdish forces closed in, eventually routing the militants.

Kurdish forces went house-to-house on Wednesday looking for any hold-outs and recovering their weapons and ammunition.

Back at a base, they laid out their haul, including machine guns, two explosive belts, four rocket-propelled grenades and several Kalashnikovs. There was also a small rucksack containing an unused roll of bandage and some dried figs.

One Kurdish fighter wore a digital watch taken from the wrist of a dead militant. “It’s a souvenir,” he said.

Saad, a peshmerga lieutenant who was wounded in the foot and still had a drip in the back of his hand, showed off an automatic rifle on which the previous owner had inscribed the name “Abu Khattab”. Stamped on the metal near the trigger was “Property of the U.S. government”.

At a press briefing on April 25, U.S. State Department spokesman John Kirby said the administration’s promises that there would be “no boots on the ground” in Iraq did not mean U.S. soldiers would never be involved in combat, only that there would be no “large-scale conventional ground combat operations”.

(Editing by Kevin Liffey)

U.S. says it, allies to do more to combat Islamic State

A F/A-18E/F Super Hornets of Strike Fighter Attack Squadron 211 (VFA-211) lands on the flight deck of the USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN-71) aircraft carrier

By Phil Stewart

STUTTGART, Germany (Reuters) – U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter said on Wednesday that Washington and its allies had agreed to do more in their campaign to defeat Islamic State, but that more risks lay ahead.

He made the comment following talks in Germany with defense ministers and representatives from 11 other nations participating in the alliance.

He said the United States greatly regretted the death of a Navy SEAL in an attack by the jihadist group in northern Iraq on Tuesday. He named the man as Petty Officer First Class Charles Keating.

“These risks will continue… but allowing ISIL safe haven would carry greater risk for us all,” he added, using an acronym for Islamic State.

“…We also agreed that all of our friends and allies across the counter-ISIL coalition can and must do more as well, both to confront ISIL in Iraq and Syria and its metastases elsewhere.”

The talks included ministers from France, Britain and Germany and were planned well in advance of Tuesday’s attack, in which Islamic State fighters blasted through Kurdish defenses and overran a town.

The elite serviceman was the third American to be killed in direct combat since the U.S.-led coalition launched a campaign in 2014 to “degrade and destroy” Islamic State, and is a measure of its deepening involvement in the conflict.

Offering new details about Keating’s mission, Carter said the SEAL’s job was to operate with Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga forces to train and assist them north of the city of Mosul.

“That part of the peshmerga front came under attack… and they found themselves in a firefight,” Carter said.

In mid-April the United States announced plans to send an additional 200 troops to Iraq and put them closer to the front lines of battle to advise Iraqi forces.

In late April, President Barack Obama announced he would send an additional 250 special operations forces to Syria, greatly expanding the U.S. presence on the ground there to help draw in more Syrian fighters to combat Islamic State.

Carter said the risks extended to pilots flying a U.S.-led campaign of daily air strikes. “Every time a pilot goes up in an airplane above Syria or Iraq they’re at risk,” he said.

The Islamist militants have been broadly retreating since December, when the Iraqi army recaptured Ramadi, the largest city in the western region. Last month, the Iraqi army retook the nearby region of Hit, pushing the militants further north along the Euphrates valley.

But U.S. officials acknowledge that the military gains are not enough.

Iraq is beset by political infighting, corruption, a growing fiscal crisis and the Shi’ite Muslim-led government’s fitful efforts to seek reconciliation with aggrieved minority Sunnis, the bedrock of Islamic State support.

(Reporting by Phil Stewart; editing by Ralph Boulton and John Stonestreet)

Rebels bombard Aleppo killing 19 and hitting a hospital

A Syrian army soldier helps to evacuate civilians after rockets fired by insurgents hit the al-Dabit maternity clinic in government-held parts of Aleppo city

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Rebels bombarded government-held areas of Aleppo with rockets on Tuesday, killing 19 people and hitting a hospital, while also launching a ground assault on army-held positions of the divided city, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

The Syrian army said insurgents had launched a widespread assault and that it was responding. State-run Syrian news channel Ikhbariya said three women were killed and 17 more people wounded at the al-Dabit maternity clinic.

The army statement said the attack was at “a time when international and local efforts are being made to shore up the (cessation of hostilities agreement) and to implement … calm in Aleppo”.

The Observatory said the hospital had been heavily damaged.

In rebel-held parts of Aleppo, the Observatory said there had been three air strikes, citing information of an unconfirmed number of people killed.

The Observatory said 279 civilians have been killed in Aleppo by bombardments since April 22, with 155 of them killed in opposition-held areas, and 124 killed in government-held districts.

The ground assault focused on the Jamiat al-Zahraa area of the city, where insurgent groups detonated tunnels and took a few buildings before advances were checked by the arrival of reinforcements on the government side, the Observatory said.

A Syrian army source said a car bomb was used in an attack nearby, adding that the assault had failed. The source added that “matters had been moving toward Aleppo being included in the truce, but it seems there are those who do not want that”.

Asked if it reduced the chances of a truce in Aleppo, the source said: “Certainly, because practically the one carrying out these actions does not want a truce”.

(Reporting by Lisa Barrington and Tom Perry, editing by Richard Balmforth)