Syria's Aleppo has emerged as focus in the long-running Syria crisis, as it's an arena for wrestling for rival forces that would determine the future of the Syria, observers said.
Her hair tied into pigtails by matching pink ribbons, seven-year-old Bana Alabed inspects the rubble in her home town of Aleppo, before walking to face the camera.
Syrian pro-government forces have pushed deeper into rebel-held eastern Aleppo, forcing civilians to flee to southern neighbourhoods to escape the onslaught as the regime pressed an assault to recapture the entire city.
All hospitals in Syria's besieged rebel-held eastern Aleppo are out of service after days of heavy air strikes, its health directorate and the World Health Organisation (WHO) said, though a war monitor said some were still functioning.
US President Barack Obama said he is "not optimistic" about Syria's future, as the UN warned time is running out to avoid a humanitarian catastrophe in Aleppo which has been pounded by air strikes for nearly a week.
The battles' heat is scorching Syria's northern city of Aleppo with the prospects so dim as a result of the widening gap between the conflicting parties as well as the ideas for defusing the tension.
UN special envoy to Syria, Staffan de Mistura, is arriving Sunday in the capital Damascus for a brief meeting with Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said Thursday he discussed Ukraine and "all aspects" of Aleppo including renewed bombing in the Syrian city this week in a meeting with Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.
A hospital, blood bank and ambulances are reported to have been hit as Syrian government aircraft and artillery bombarded rebel-held eastern Aleppo.
Intense air strikes resumed in rebel-held districts of eastern Aleppo after a weeks-long pause on Tuesday, killing at least three people, residents and a war monitor said.
European Union leaders condemned Russia on Friday for its bombing of civilians in Syria's besieged city of Aleppo but faced resistance from Italy to impose new sanctions against Moscow over the atrocities.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry played down expectations of a new Syrian ceasefire deal with Russia after talks in Geneva aimed at agreeing on how to separate al Qaeda-linked militants from opposition fighters in the besieged city of Aleppo.
Syria's President Bashar al-Assad said on Friday that the Syrian army's capture of Aleppo, which has come under renewed bombardment in an effort to seize its rebel-held sector, would be "a very important springboard" to pushing "terrorists" back to Turkey.
The current situation in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo has become "unacceptable", foreign ministers of Italy, France, and Germany said after holding talks here on Wednesday.
Russian jets resumed heavy bombing of rebel-held eastern Aleppo on Tuesday after several days of relative calm, a rebel official and the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said.
The UN Security Council is scheduled to have an emergency meeting on Saturday to discuss the current situation in Syria as Russia and the United States are at odds with each other over the airstrikes on the northern Syrian city of Aleppo, diplomats told Xinhua here Friday.
The UN Special Envoy for Syria offered Thursday to physically accompany 900 al-Nusra fighters out of east Aleppo in a bid to prevent more civilian bloodshed there.
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