Tag Archives: France

Year-old Paris attack probe sights new suspect, but mastermind elusive

People mourning outside of Paris attacks

By Chine Labbé

PARIS (Reuters) – French investigators believe they have identified a Belgian militant in Syria as a coordinator of the deadly Islamic State (IS) attack on Paris, but a year on they are still struggling to pinpoint the mastermind.

Just ahead of the Nov. 13 anniversary of an assault that killed 130 people and injured hundreds, victims and relatives of the dead still seek answers. And the only living person believed to be part of the hit-team, now behind bars, refuses to talk.

A painstaking investigation led by an exceptionally large team of six judicial magistrates has inched forward in search of the “remote-controllers” – those who pulled the strings from abroad, at IS bases in Iraq and Syria or elsewhere.

A source close to the investigation told Reuters this week that a new name had been added to the web of militants involved as coordinators – Oussama Atar, a 32-year-old from a Brussels suburb, now believed to be in Syria.

“It’s a very strong suspicion,” said the source, speaking on condition of anonymity. “We are wary of being definitive while the investigation is still under way.”

Atar was jailed in Iraq on arms-trafficking charges before ultimately joining IS ranks in Syria in 2012, and is suspected of playing a key coordination role in the Nov. 13 rampage, but not of being “mastermind in chief”, the source said.

In particular, Atar is suspected of having recruited two Iraqis who blew themselves up outside the Stade de France sports stadium north of the French capital as part of a broader series of assaults in the heart of Paris on Nov. 13 last year.

He is also suspected of being the person to whom other suicide bombers reported before blowing themselves up in further attacks in Belgium that killed 32 on March 22 this year.

SURVIVORS DISSATISFIED WITH PROBE

Atar, the latest addition to France’s suspects list, was identified in a group of photos shown to a militant arrested in Austria. But that advance means little for the survivors of the attacks, in which 90 of the 130 killed were shot or blown up by armed suicide bombers at the Bataclan concert hall in Paris.

“Even if there’s little chance of bringing the attack mastermind to justice, it would be nice to know his name,” said Emmanuel Domenach, who was at the Bataclan when it was attacked.

Sting, a veteran English pop star who has used his celebrity to champion social campaigns such as defense of forest tribes in South America, is scheduled to play on Saturday at the historic venue to mark its post-attack reopening.

Bernard Bajolet, head of France’s foreign intelligence service, told a parliamentary inquiry in May that the orchestrators of the Nov. 13 attack had been identified but declined to name names to protect his sources.

Investigators, however, have yet to make such an identification, another source, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters, and do not know who Bajolet was referring to.

At one stage, it was assumed that the mastermind of the attacks was Abdelhamid Abaaoud, a Belgo-Moroccan killed by elite French police in a spectacular assault on a flat close to Paris a few days after the Nov. 13 killings.

He was subsequently relegated by investigators to a coordinator role like Atar’s.

Three teams took part in the attack – suicide bombers at the Stade de France, gunmen who opened fire on cafes in Paris, and the squad that killed 90 at the Bataclan.

Salah Abdeslam, captured in Belgium after fleeing Paris on the night of the attack and later transferred back to France, is in solitary confinement in a jail on the edge of Paris, but refused to speak at court hearings. He is believed to be the sole survivor of the IS hit team.

The Nov. 13 attacks and subsequent assaults this year have shaken French society.

A state of emergency imposed after the Paris killings was about to be lifted when, on France’s July 14 national holiday, an IS devotee ploughed a truck into a crowd of revelers in the Riviera resort city of Nice, killing 86. About two weeks later, an Islamist slit a priest’s throat in a church in Normandy.

As armed soldiers continue to patrol the Paris landmarks where tourist numbers have thinned, Europe’s largest community of Muslims lives in greater fear of mistrustful neighbors.

Meanwhile the ruling Socialist party has torn itself apart over an abortive attempt to introduce a law stripping people convicted of terrorism of their nationality, and security and immigration promise to be major issues in next year’s presidential election.

(Additional reporting by Gerard Bon; writing by Brian Love; editing by Andrew Callus and Mark Heinrich)

China to have world’s largest nuclear capacity in 15 years: WNA

Nuclear Reactor in China

By Jessica Jaganathan

SINGAPORE (Reuters) – China is set to overtake the United States to have the world’s largest nuclear capacity over the next 10 to 15 years as it races to build new reactors to combat pollution, the World Nuclear Association (WNA) said on Tuesday.

It will overtake France to have the second-highest number of nuclear reactors by 2020, Agneta Rising, the WNA’s director general, said at an annual energy conference in Singapore.

“For China, the air pollution is a major driver,” she said on the sidelines of the Singapore International Energy Week.

In Asia, 134 operable reactors generated 400 terawatt-hours of electricity in 2015, making up 16 percent of global nuclear generation, the WNA said in a report released on Tuesday.

Another 39 reactors comprising 47.4 gigawatts (GW) are currently under construction in Asia, which comprises nearly two-thirds of global reactor construction. China makes up the bulk with 20 reactors under construction.

“There is history in the region, where you have high-skilled people with very good university education and they have been working on research reactors … so I think there is basis of knowledge,” Rising said. “The big driver (in Asia) is to have electricity for people.”

There are also plans for more than 50 reactors comprising more than 50,000 megawatts (MW) in nine new countries in the region, with most planning to have their first nuclear reactors enter operation before 2030, the WNA said.

Bangladesh looks likely to have the first reactor online among these new countries in six years, Rising said, which would also be the first for the country.

However, many southeast Asian countries are pushing back the timeline for new reactors to come online, including Malaysia and Thailand.

“It’s a combination of cost as it’s a large infrastructure and also there needs to be more groups involved in discussions and have transparency in plans,” she said.

New reactor construction is mostly led by industrializing countries which have enjoyed high levels of economic growth with an accompanying increase in energy demand, the WNA said in the report.

Four countries are expected to account for 70 percent of reactors commissioned in the period to 2030, which are China, Russia, India and South Korea.

(Editing by Christian Schmollinger)

France clears ‘Jungle’ migrant camp in Calais, children in limbo

Migrants/refugees with their belongings during evacuation

By Matthias Blamont

CALAIS, France (Reuters) – France began clearing the sprawling “Jungle” migrant camp on Monday as hundreds gave up on their dreams of reaching Britain, a tantalizingly short sea crossing away.

Following sporadic outbreaks of unrest overnight, the migrants chose instead with calm resignation to be relocated in France while their asylum requests are considered.

By lunchtime more than 700 had left the squalid shanty-town outside Calais on France’s northern coast for reception centers across the country. Hundreds more queued outside a hangar, waiting to be processed before the bulldozers move in.

French officials celebrated the peaceful start to yet another attempt to dismantle the camp, which has become a symbol of Europe’s failure to respond to the migration crisis as member states squabble over who should take in those fleeing war and poverty.

But some aid workers warned that the trouble overnight, when some migrants burned toilet blocks and threw stones at riot police in protest at the camp’s closure, indicated tensions could escalate.

“I hope this works out. I’m alone and I just have to study,” said Amadou Diallo from the West African nation of Guinea. “It doesn’t matter where I end up, I don’t really care.”

The Socialist government says it is closing the camp, home to 6,500 migrants, on humanitarian grounds. It plans to relocate them to 450 centers across France.

Many of the migrants are from countries such as Afghanistan, Syria and Eritrea and had wanted to reach Britain, which is connected to France by a rail tunnel and visible from Calais on a clear day. Some had wished to join up with relatives already there and most had planned to seek work, believing that jobs are more plentiful than in France.

Britain, however, bars most of them on the basis of European Union rules requiring them to seek asylum in the first member states they set foot in.

DESTINATION UNKNOWN

Even as the process began, the fate of about 1,300 unaccompanied child migrants remained uncertain.

French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve urged Britain last week to step up efforts to identify and resettle child migrants. London has given priority to children with family ties and discussions are underway with Paris over who should take in minors with no connections.

Britain’s Home Office said on Monday it had reluctantly agreed to suspend the transfer of more children, on the request of the French authorities.

For now, children will be moved to converted shipping containers at a site on the edge of the Jungle before they are interviewed by French and British immigration officials, a spokesman for the U.N. refugee agency in Geneva said.

“It’s cold here,” said one Sudanese teenager who identified himself as Abdallah. “Maybe we’ll be able to leave in a bus later, or next week, for Britain.”

Armed police earlier fanned out across the Jungle as the operation got underway.

Interior Ministry spokesman Pierre-Henry Brandet said that authorities had not needed to use force and that the large police presence at the camp on Monday was just for security.

RAZING THE CAMP

Aid workers went from tent to tent, urging migrants to leave the camp before heavy machinery is rolled in to start the demolition.

The hundreds who volunteered on Monday to move on were each given two destinations to chose from before being bussed to the reception centers. There they will receive medical checks and if they have not already done so, decide whether to apply for asylum.

The far-right National Front party said the government plan would create mini-Calais camps across France.

Officials expect 60 buses to leave the camp on Monday and the government predicts the evacuation will take at least a week.

Many tents and makeshift structures that had housed cafes, bakeries and kiosks lay abandoned. On the side of one wooden shack a message to British Prime Minister Theresa May had been scrawled in spray-paint: “UK government! Nobody is illegal!”

Despite the calm, charity workers expect hundreds will try to stay and cautioned that the mood could change later in the week when work begins on razing the camp.

“There’s a risk that tensions increase in the week because at some point the bulldozers are going to have to come in,” said Fabrice Durieux from the charity Salam.

Others warned that many migrants who remained determined to reach Britain would simply scatter into the surrounding countryside, only to regroup in Calais at a later date.

“Each time they dismantle part of the camp it’s the same thing. You’re going to see them go into hiding and then come back. The battles will continue,” said Christian Salome, president of non-profit group Auberge des Migrants.

(Additional reporting by Stephanie Ulmer-Nebehay in Geneva and Kylie MacLellan in London; Writing by Richard Lough; Editing by Geert De Clercq and David Stamp)

French police stage impromptu protest against violence

French police gather outside a local police station in Paris, France, October 11, 2016, after a Molotov cocktail attack over the weekend near Paris that injured their colleagues.

PARIS (Reuters) – Hundreds of French police officers staged an unauthorized protest overnight in Paris against anti-police violence, driving their vehicles down the Champs Elysee boulevard with sirens and flashing lights.

French security forces are already under immense pressure following a string of deadly Islamist militant attacks in the past 18 months. Police say they face staff and equipment shortages, and are frequently forced to work overtime.

Police unions complained angrily a week ago about the risk of being sent into gang-ridden “no-go zones” after two officers were injured in a petrol bomb attack on their patrol car in notoriously crime-ridden zone 30 km south of Paris.

Local TV channels LCI and BFM TV broadcast interviews with the police officers who said they had decided to organize the protest spontaneously, without official backing of their labor unions. Their job was becoming impossible, the officers, whose identities were concealed, told the television stations.

National police director Jean-Marc Falcone condemned the protest action in a statement on Tuesday.

“Police officers cannot transgress the responsibility their status imposes and which underpins the legitimacy of their police and public service mission as well as the laws of the republic,” Falcone said.

An internal investigation will establish who was responsible, he said.

The government of Socialist President Francois Hollande, who faces presidential and legislative elections in the first quarter of 2017, has started restoring thousands of police posts axed by former President Nicolas Sarkozy.

But it has also deployed thousands of police and soldiers in a bid to boost security at sensitive sites such as schools, synagogues and train stations in the wake of militant attacks.

(Reporting By Brian Love; Editing by Mathieu Rosemain and Raissa Kasolowsky)

Britain, France seek EU condemnation of Russia over Syria

Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks during a news conference following the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) Summit in the western state of Goa, India,

By Robin Emmott

LUXEMBOURG (Reuters) – Britain and France sought to persuade the European Union on Monday to condemn Russia’s devastating air campaign in Syria and impose more sanctions on President Bashar al-Assad’s government, but met resistance from allies worried about alienating Moscow.

After a weekend of U.S.-led diplomacy that failed to find a breakthrough, EU foreign ministers met in Luxembourg to call for an end to the bombing of rebel-held east Aleppo, where 275,000 people are trapped, and to rush humanitarian aid into the city.

“The pressure (on Russia) must be strong,” France’s Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said. “The more the European Union shows unity and determination, the more we can move forward in what is a moral obligation: to stop the massacre of the population of Aleppo,” he told reporters.

But the bloc is split over strategy towards Russia, its biggest energy supplier, with divisions about how harsh any criticism of Moscow should be and whether there was ground for also putting Russians under sanctions.

Britain and France want to put another 20 Syrians under travel bans and asset freezes, suspecting them of directing attacks on civilians in Aleppo, in addition to the EU’s existing sanctions list and its oil and arms embargo.

Britain has also raised the prospect of sanctions on Russians involved in the Syrian conflict, adding them to the EU’s list of 208 people and 69 companies that also includes three Iranians, diplomats told Reuters.

British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, who held talks with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Sunday in London, said Russia’s Aleppo bombing “shames humanity” and called Russia the Syrian government’s “puppeteers.”

Britain and the United States say they are considering imposing additional sanctions on Assad and his supporters, without naming Russia.

Spain, which co-sponsored with France a U.N. resolution for a ceasefire that the Kremlin vetoed this month, would back Russian sanctions if they helped “bring Russia’s position closer to ours” acting Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo said.

European Union leaders will discuss Russia and possibly talk about new sanctions at a summit on Thursday. But Russia’s closest EU allies Greece, Cyprus and Hungary are against.

Austria, a transit point for flows for Russian gas to Europe, also voiced its opposition on Monday.

“The idea to have additional sanctions against Russia would be wrong,” Austria’s Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurz told reporters. “We do not need a further escalation,” he said.

Germany also appeared cautious, with Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier rejecting adding punitive measures against Russia, although a German newspaper has cited sources saying that Chancellor Angela Merkel was in favor.

The West imposed broad economic sanctions on Moscow over its 2014 annexation of Crimea and its support for rebels in Ukraine.

British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson (C) takes part in a meeting on the situation in Syria at Lancaster House in London

British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson (C) takes part in a meeting on the situation in Syria at Lancaster House in London October 16, 2016. REUTERS/JUSTIN TALLIS/Pool

 

EU PEACE ROLE?

U.N. Special Envoy Staffan de Mistura briefed EU ministers about the chances for peace after talks that took place without Europe in the Swiss city of Lausanne on Saturday. Diplomats meanwhile tried to craft a diplomatic statement on behalf of all 28 governments condemning Russian air strikes.

France and Britain want tough language, incensed by the Russian-backed campaign has killed several hundred people, including dozens of children, since the collapse of a truce brokered by Russia and the United States.

According to one draft seen by Reuters, EU ministers will condemn the “catastrophic escalation” of the Syrian government offensive to capture eastern Aleppo, where 8,000 rebels are holding out against Syrian, Russian and Iranian-backed forces.

They will say that air strikes on hospitals and civilians “may amount to war crimes”, calling on “Syria and its allies” to go to the International Criminal Court

Diplomats say the European Union will also call for a ceasefire with an observation mission, immediate access for an EU aid package announced on Oct. 2 and a bigger role for EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini.

With no military presence in the Syria conflict, the EU is searching for a role as peacemaker and could try to lead a process to bring regional powers including Saudi Arabia, Iran and Turkey to talks on a final peace settlement, if a ceasefire can be agreed and aid delivered first.

Paris is adamant Mogherini have no contact with Assad.

(Additional reporting by Alastair Macdonald and Philip Blenkinsop in Brussels; Editing by Dominic Evans)

First unaccompanied children from Calais ‘Jungle’ reach Britain

UK Border Force staff escort the first group of unaccompanied minors from the Jungle migrant camp in Calais to be brought to Britain as they arrive at an immigration centre in Croydon, south London,

LONDON (Reuters) – A first busload of children arrived in Britain on Monday from the “Jungle” camp near the French port of Calais as the British government started to act on its commitment to take in unaccompanied migrant children before the camp is destroyed.

The fate of children staying in the Jungle, a squalid camp where up to 10,000 people fleeing war or poverty in the Middle East and Africa have converged seeking ways to cross to Britain, has been a political problem for the British government.

Religious leaders, refugee rights campaign groups and opposition parties have accused the government of dragging its heels on helping to move unaccompanied children out of the camp, which France has said it will soon demolish.

The French and British interior ministers, Bernard Cazeneuve and Amber Rudd, agreed in talks on Oct. 10 to speed up the process of moving children eligible to go to Britain out of the Jungle.

Fourteen children, the first whose cases have been processed, arrived by bus in Croydon, south London, to be reunited with relatives already living in Britain. Faith leaders and aid workers were on hand to welcome and assist them.

“The camp at Calais is a desperate, dangerous, horrible place, nowhere any adult should be, let alone any child,” said Bishop of Croydon Jonathan Clark.

“So this is a really good day to celebrate as some of those children begin to make their journeys to be reunited with their families,” he told reporters outside a Croydon church.

It is not known exactly how many children will be brought to Britain. The British interior ministry has said 80 children had been accepted for transfer from France so far this year under EU family reunification rules known as the Dublin regulation.

The Red Cross estimates that 1,000 unaccompanied children are living in the Jungle, of whom 178 have been identified as having family ties to Britain. It has said some of these children have been held back by bureaucracy.

Separately from the Dublin process, Britain has sent out a team to work with the French authorities to identify children who can be brought to Britain under the terms of a change to British immigration law known as the Dubs amendment.

It states that Britain will take in “vulnerable unaccompanied child refugees” who arrived in the EU before March 20, even if they do not have relatives in Britain.

March 20 was date of an EU-Turkey deal aimed at limiting the flow of migrants into the bloc, which reached crisis levels in 2015. The Dubs amendment is named after the politician who proposed it, Alf Dubs, who came to Britain as a Jewish child refugee fleeing Nazi persecution.

(Reporting by Estelle Shirbon; editing by Stephen Addison)

Nice prepares to remember attack victims in special ceremony

A woman stands near a memorial to the victims of the July 14 attack on the Promenade des Anglais, two days before a national tribute in Nice, France, October 12, 2016. REUTERS

NICE, France (Reuters) – Three months after a man plowed his truck into crowds on France’s national day in Nice, the southern coastal city is trying to recover as it prepares to remember the 86 victims in a national ceremony of remembrance.

Tributes line the sea-front promenade along which Tunisian-born Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel drove a 19-ton truck, mowing down people watching fireworks on France’s July 14 Bastille Day, before police shot him dead.

Curious visitors and grieving locals stop to look at bouquets of flowers, toys and yellowing notes left in memory of the victims.

“We haven’t forgotten it. People are less trusting, more nervous and the atmosphere is heavier,” said Stephanie Marton, a mother of five who was on the promenade with her children that night. “(It) is not at all like what it was before July 14.”

Marton said the family, who threw themselves onto the ground out of the way of the truck hurtling toward them, still lives in the shadow of the attack.

People walk past a memorial to the victims of the July 14 attack on the Promenade des Anglais, two days before a national tribute in Nice, France,

People walk past a memorial to the victims of the July 14 attack on the Promenade des Anglais, two days before a national tribute in Nice, France, October 12, 2016. REUTERS/Eric Gaillard

“Three months later, it’s still in their heads and it’s still hard for them,” she said. “They still have nightmares at night – and I sometimes get them too – and they find it really hard to be near the promenade.”

Nice was due to hold a national ceremony of remembrance, led by French President Francois Hollande, on Friday, exactly three months after the attack.

But a statement from his Elysee Palace on Thursday said the event, on a hill overlooking the French Riviera and attended by survivors and victims’ families, will now take place on Saturday due to bad weather.

(Reporting by Michel Bernouin; Writing by Johnny Cotton and Marie-Louise Gumuchian; Editing by Tom Heneghan)

Air strikes hit eastern Aleppo, including market, kill 25

People inspect the damage at a market hit by airstrikes in Aleppo's rebel held al-Fardous district, Syria

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Heavy air strikes on rebel-held areas in the Syrian city of Aleppo killed 25 people on Wednesday, most of them at a market, a rescue service said, as the Syrian government and Russia pursued their joint offensive to capture the whole city.

Syrian and Russian military officials could not immediately be reached for comment on the latest air strikes.

The Civil Defence, a rescue service operating in rebel-held areas, said on its Twitter feed the air strikes had killed 25 people, 15 of them at a market place in the Fardous district.

Heavy aerial bombardment of eastern Aleppo resumed on Tuesday after a pause of several days which the Syrian army said was designed to allow civilians to leave.

President Bashar al-Assad, with military backing from Russia and Iranian-backed militias, aims to take back all of Aleppo, which was Syria’s biggest city before the outbreak of war in 2011. The city has been divided between government and rebel control for years.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based organization that reports on the war, also reported heavy air strikes against the rebel-held Eastern Ghouta area near Damascus.

A Syrian military source said that warplanes had struck several locations to the south and southwest of Aleppo.

Western states have condemned the Syrian government and Russia over their latest onslaught against rebel-held Aleppo. The Syrian army has denied any targeting of civilians but France and the United States have called for an investigation into what they said amounted to war crimes by Syrian and Russian forces in the city.

Russia on Saturday vetoed a French-drafted United Nations Security Council resolution that would have demanded an immediate end to air strikes and military flights over Syria’s Aleppo city.

(Writing by Tom Perry; Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky)

Russia under pressure to stop devastating Aleppo bombardment

An over-crowded graveyard is pictured in the rebel held al-Shaar neighbourhood of Aleppo

By Jack Stubbs and John Davison

MOSCOW/BEIRUT (Reuters) – Russia said on Friday a draft U.N. resolution demanding an end to air strikes and military flights over the Syrian city of Aleppo was unacceptable, as Moscow faced growing international pressure to stop a devastating bombardment of the city backed by Russian air power.

Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov said a draft put forward by France contained a number of unacceptable points and politicized the issue of humanitarian aid.

But Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Russia would support an eye-catching proposal by U.N. Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura to escort militants out of Aleppo personally.

Russia was ready to call on the Syrian government to allow fighters from the Islamist Nusra Front to leave the city with their weapons, Lavrov said.

Lavrov was speaking a day after Syrian President Bashar al-Assad offered fighters and their families amnesty to leave rebel-held eastern Aleppo under guarantee of safe passage to other parts of Syria held by the insurgents.

However, rebels have told Reuters they do not trust Assad, and have said they believe such an agreement would be aimed at purging Sunni Muslims from eastern Aleppo.

The offer follows two weeks of the heaviest bombardment of the 5-1/2-year civil war, which has killed hundreds of people trapped inside Aleppo’s eastern sector and torpedoed a U.S.-backed peace initiative.

More than 250,000 people are believed to be trapped in eastern Aleppo, facing severe shortages of food and medicine.

The war has already killed hundreds of thousands, made half of Syrians homeless, dragged in global and regional powers and left swathes of the country in the hands of jihadists from Islamic State who have carried out attacks around the globe.

The United States and Russia are both fighting against Islamic State but are on opposite sides in the wider civil war, with Moscow fighting to protect Assad and Washington supporting rebels against him.

“ATROCIOUS CRIMES”

German Chancellor Angela Merkel urged Russia to use its influence with the Syrian government to end the bombardment of Aleppo, as her government opened the door to possible sanctions against Russia for its role in the conflict.

Merkel said there was no basis in international law for bombing hospitals and Moscow should use its influence with Assad to end the bombing of civilians.

“Russia has a lot of influence on Assad. We must end these atrocious crimes,” Merkel told an audience of party members in Germany.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said Russian and Syrian actions such as bombing hospitals in Syria cried out for a war crimes investigation.

“Last night, the (Syrian) regime attacked yet another hospital and 20 people were killed and 100 people were wounded. Russia, and the regime, owe the world more than an explanation about why they keep hitting hospitals and medical facilities and children and women,” Kerry told reporters in Washington.

“These are acts that beg for an appropriate investigation of war crimes and those who commit these would and should be held accountable for these actions.”

Russia said the call for an investigation was an attempt to distract from the failure of a U.S.-Russia brokered ceasefire, according to Tass news agency.

“It is very dangerous to play with such words because war crimes also weigh on the shoulders of American officials,” said Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, according to RIA news agency.

Russia and Syria accuse the United States of supporting terrorists by backing rebel groups. The Syrian and Russian governments say they target only militants.

Russia has built up its forces in Syria since the ceasefire collapsed, sending in troops, planes and advanced missile systems, a Reuters analysis of publicly available tracking data shows.

The U.N. Security Council was expected to vote on Saturday on a draft resolution that calls for an immediate truce throughout Syria and access for humanitarian aid. It also “demands that all parties immediately end all aerial bombardments of and military flights over Aleppo city.”

French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault, speaking through an interpreter as he and Kerry spoke to reporters before they met at the State Department in Washington said:

“Tomorrow, will be a moment of truth – a moment of truth for all the members of the Security Council. Do you, yes or no, want a ceasefire in Aleppo? And the question is in particular for our Russian partners.”

Russia is expected to use its power of veto. Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov told Interfax news agency Moscow had hoped talks with Ayrault, who was in Moscow earlier this week, “would help to find a way forward”.

“Instead of that, in New York we now have an attempt at political blackmail by putting to the vote, possibly tomorrow, a French resolution on the Syria crisis which is unacceptable for us.”

ALEPPO FIGHTING

The Syrian army and its allies clashed on Friday in the south of Aleppo with rebels seeking to oust Assad, part of a pro-government offensive to retake the city.

The fighting was concentrated in Sheikh Saeed, a rebel-held district of the city next to Ramousah, where the most intense battles this summer took place, but there were conflicting accounts of whether the army made any gains.

Air strikes on rebel-held eastern Aleppo by the Syrian military and Russian jets remained significantly lighter than during the previous two weeks following an army announcement on Wednesday that it would lessen its bombardment.

“Today there’s no bombardment on the neighborhoods in the city, until now. We don’t know what will happen in an hour,” said Ammar al-Selmo, head of the civil defense rescue organization in Aleppo.

A Syrian military source said the army had captured several important positions on Sheikh Saeed’s hilltop, but rebels said later those gains had been reversed and that insurgents still held the area.

Later in the day a number of air strikes hit areas of Sheikh Saeed, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group reported. Syrian state TV meanwhile reported that rebel shelling of government-held neighborhoods killed four people and wounded many more. The Observatory said insurgent shelling had killed 15 people in Aleppo over the past 24 hours.

The Observatory said that according to its own tallies, thousands of people had been killed in Russian air strikes over the past year, a significant number of them civilians.

Since the start of an offensive two weeks ago, following the collapse of a short ceasefire, the army and its allies have made some progress in northern and central districts of rebel-held eastern Aleppo.

However, to completely storm eastern Aleppo could take months and would involve the destruction of the city and great loss of life, de Mistura said on Thursday.

(Additonal reporting by Arshad Mohammed in Washington, Michelle Nichols at the United Nations and Angus McDowall in Beirut; Writing by Giles Elgood; Editing by Bernard Orr and James Dalgleish)

France makes new push for Aleppo ceasefire

The sun sets over Aleppo as seen from rebel-held part of the city

By John Irish, Lidia Kelly and Angus McDowall

PARIS/MOSCOW/BEIRUT (Reuters) – France is to launch a new push for United Nations backing for a ceasefire in Syria that would allow aid into the city of Aleppo after some of the heaviest bombing of the war.

As diplomatic efforts resumed, the Syrian military said army commanders had decided to scale back air strikes and shelling in Aleppo to alleviate the humanitarian situation there.

It said civilians in rebel-held eastern Aleppo were being used as human shields and a reduced level of bombardment would allow people to leave for safer areas.

Intense Syrian and Russian bombing of rebel-held areas of the northern city of Aleppo followed the collapse last month of a ceasefire brokered by Moscow and Washington, which backs some rebel groups. The United States broke off talks with Russia on Monday, accusing it of breaking its commitments.

France said Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault would travel to Russia and the United States on Thursday and Friday to try to persuade both sides to adopt a Security Council resolution to impose a new truce.

Ayrault has accused Syria, backed by Russia and Iran, of war crimes as part of an “all-out war” on its people. Damascus rejects the accusation, saying it is only fighting terrorists.

Speaking to French television channel LCI, Ayrault said: “If you’re complicit in war crimes then one day you will be held accountable, including legally. I think with the Russians you have to speak the truth and not try to please them.”

The former prime minister said he would also ask Washington to be “more efficient and engaged” and not allow a laissez-faire attitude to take over just because presidential elections were approaching in November.

“ALL THAT’S LEFT”

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry discussed Syria by telephone on Wednesday, but no details emerged. The Russian Foreign Ministry confirmed that Lavrov would meet Ayrault in Moscow on Thursday.

The two-week-old Russian-backed Syrian government offensive aims to capture eastern Aleppo and crush the last urban stronghold of a revolt against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad that began in 2011.

Half of the estimated 275,000 Syrians besieged in the rebel-held eastern part of the city want to leave, the United Nations said, with food supplies running short and people driven to burning plastic for fuel.

Mothers were reportedly tying ropes around their stomachs or drinking large amounts of water to reduce the feeling of hunger and prioritise food for their children, the U.N. Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said in Geneva.

The Security Council began negotiations on Monday on a French and Spanish draft resolution that urges Russia and the United States to ensure an immediate truce in Aleppo and to “put an end to all military flights over the city”.

“This trip is in the framework of efforts by France to get a resolution adopted at the U.N. Security Council opening the path for a ceasefire in Aleppo and aid access for populations that need it so much,” the French foreign ministry said.

Russian U.N. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin said on Monday that Moscow was engaged in discussions on the draft text even if he was not especially enthusiastic about its language.

The draft text, seen by Reuters, urges Russia and the United States “to ensure the immediate implementation of the cessation of hostilities, starting with Aleppo, and, to that effect, to put an end to all military flights over the city.”

The draft also asks U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon to propose options for U.N.-supervised monitoring of a truce and threatens to “take further measures” in the event of non-compliance by “any party to the Syrian domestic conflict”.

A senior Security Council diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity, said: “In the experts’ negotiations they (Russia) have opposed every single dot and comma of the resolution.”

French officials have said that if Moscow were to oppose the resolution they would be ready to put it forward anyway to force Moscow into a veto, underscoring its complicity with the Syrian government.

“It’s all that’s left,” said a French diplomatic source. “We’re not fools. The Russians aren’t going to begin respecting human rights from one day to the next, but it’s all we have to put pressure on them.”

People walk past damaged buildings in the rebel-held Tariq al-Bab neighbourhood of Aleppo, Syria,

People walk past damaged buildings in the rebel-held Tariq al-Bab neighbourhood of Aleppo, Syria, October 5, 2016. To match Insight MIDEAST-CRISIS/SYRIA-ALEPPO REUTERS/Abdalrhman Ismail

GULF STATES

Ayrault said in the television interview that the situation was unacceptable. “It is deeply shocking and shameful,” he said. “France will not close its eyes and do nothing. It’s cynicism that fools nobody.”

The collapse of the latest Syria ceasefire has heightened the possibility that Gulf states including Saudi Arabia and Qatar – backers of Syrian rebels – might arm the opposition with shoulder-fired missiles to defend themselves against Syrian and Russian warplanes, U.S. officials have said.

Qatar’s foreign minister said outside powers need to act fast to protect Syrians because foreign military backing for the government is “changing the equation” of the war.

A United Nations expert said that analysis of satellite imagery of a deadly and disputed attack on an aid convoy in Syria last month showed that it was an air strike.

Some 20 people were killed in the attack on the U.N. and Syrian Arab Red Crescent convoy at Urem Al-Kubra near Aleppo.

The United States blamed two Russian warplanes which it said were in the skies above the area at the time of the incident. Moscow denies this and says the convoy caught fire.

“With our analysis we determined it was an air strike and I think multiple other sources have said that as well,” Lars Bromley, research adviser at UNOSAT, told a news briefing.

In northern Syria, rebels were expecting stiff resistance from Islamic State in their attempt to capture a village that is of great symbolic significance to the jihadists, a rebel commander said.

With Turkish backing, rebels fighting under the Free Syrian Army banner have advanced to within a few kilometres (miles) of Dabiq, the site of an apocalyptic prophecy central to the militant group’s ideology.

(Writing by Giles Elgood and Philippa Fletcher, editing by Peter Millership)