Airstrikes leave millions of people in Aleppo 'without water'

  • Video report by ITV News Reporter Marc Mallett:

A series of intense airstrikes has left nearly two million people in the Syrian city of Aleppo without water, the UN has said.

The UN's children's charity UNICEF said the attacks have damaged a water pumping station which supplies about 250,000 people in eastern parts and violence is preventing repair teams from reaching it.

Meanwhile a separate pumping station in the east of the city was switched off in retaliation, cutting off water to 1.5 million people in western Aleppo, the charity added.

UNICEF said the lack of running water is putting children at risk of "catastrophic outbreaks" of waterborne diseases.

Hanaa Singer, UNICEF's representative in Syria, said: “Nearly two million people in Aleppo are once again with no running water through the public network.

“In the eastern part of Aleppo, the population will have to resort to highly contaminated well water. In the western part, existing deep ground water wells will provide a safe alternative water source.

"UNICEF will also expand emergency water trucking throughout the city, but this is a temporary solution that is not sustainable in the long term."

  • New wave of airstrikes

UNICEF says children in Aleppo are at serious risk of contracting waterborne diseases. Credit: Reuters

The warning comes as the Russian-backed Syrian military launched a new wave of heavy airstrikes on rebel-held areas of the city on Saturday morning, Reuters news agency said.

Rebel officials said heavy air strikes on Saturday morning hit at least four areas of the opposition-held east, killing 54 by lunchtime. The main attack was at Bustan al Kasr.

It follows the deaths of 91 people in rebel-held eastern districts of Aleppo on Friday in the second day of intense bombings described by an expert as "nothing short of Armageddon".

"They are using weapons that appear to be specifically for (bringing down) buildings," a senior official in an Aleppo-based rebel faction, the Levant Front, told Reuters.

"Most of the victims are under the rubble because more than half the civildefence has been forced out of service."

The Syrian army says it is targeting rebel positions in the city, and denies hitting civilians.