Dozens Are Killed in Aleppo, Homs Violence

Activists said at least 25 people had been killed in ongoing violence in Aleppo on Sunday, as the government intensifies its bombing of the city ahead of planned peace talks in Switzerland in January. It was the eighth day of bombardments of rebel-held areas.

Meanwhile, a suicide car bombing (blamed on insurgents by Syria’s state-run media) killed 10 people in Homs province.

“Video from Aleppo posted by activists showed a red fireball over a neighborhood, body parts and people digging frantically through the rubble as sirens wailed in the background. An antigovernment group, the Aleppo Media Center, put the death toll at 32, while the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which tracks the conflict through a network of contacts in Syria, said it was 25, with others in critical condition,” Anne Barnard writes in the New York Times.

“The government has said it is targeting ‘terrorist’ insurgents in Aleppo, while residents and activists have said that, in recent days, the bombings have mainly killed civilians in some of the fiercest attacks there in months.”

Half-Million Wounded in Syria Conflict

Gulf Today, via agencies, reports that the International Committee of the Red Cross has declared that the number of people injured since the start of the crisis has reached 500,000.

“‘At least half a million people have been wounded across the country and millions remain displaced and tens of thousands detained,’ said ICRC chief Magne Barth. ‘The wounded are often not cared for properly and the chronically ill often do not receive the treatment they need.’

The ICRC urged again the Syrian government and the rebels to allow humanitarian assistance to reach all people affected by the 33-month conflict.

Barth said Syrian authorities were preventing access to rebel-held areas besieged by loyalist troops, including in Homs and Damascus provinces, despite saying more humanitarian assistance was needed. ‘Our staff are still not allowed to enter besieged areas to deliver aid, including much-needed medical supplies, to all people in need whoever they may be.’”

My First Year as a Refugee from Syria

Mother-of-four Um Fouad tells the Guardian’s Paula Cocozza about her first year as a refugee at Jordan’s Zaatari camp.

“When we arrived, I went to the doctor and he told me I didn’t have any physical problems. What I was feeling was all psychological. I felt sadness. I felt frustration. I was devastated by the idea of being a refugee and thinking of my family who did not come with us. The impact of suddenly, in a blink of an eye, losing everything,” she says.

“The camp is divided into streets of 84 caravans. Each street is divided into neighborhoods. We … made little private gardens. It grew and grew, our neighborhood. Now we share social events together; one woman’s son is getting married. Me and my neighbors have this daily routine of coming together, sitting, making some coffee. We sit and drink, and each one of us who has a burden in this life shares it. I love the camp. I feel like I am in Syria while I am in it.”

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