Aid workers in the devastated Syrian city of Aleppo say Syria and its Russian allies stepped up their bombing campaign on rebel-held eastern parts of the city Monday, killing nearly 100 people on the fourth consecutive day of mayhem and death.
Relief workers from the Society of Anglican Missionaries, writing on Twitter, said the dead included children. They also said medical personnel and hospitals are "overwhelmed," with no additional supplies arriving.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, responding to those reports, said the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad and its Russian allies "seem intent on taking Aleppo and destroying it in the process."
Kerry also discounted a televised report from Damascus quoting a top Syrian diplomat as saying the Assad government is prepared to take part in a unity coalition.
"While they're pounding Aleppo, dropping indiscriminate bombs, killing women and children, talk of a unity government is pretty complicated," Kerry said from the Colombian city of Cartagena.
Monitors from the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights say nearly 250 people have been killed in Aleppo and outlying areas since a shaky cease-fire disintegrated earlier this month. That truce, negotiated by Russian and U.S. diplomats, was called to allow aid workers to distribute critically needed food and medicine to hundreds of thousands of civilians cut off from supplies.
However, observers, pointing to the deadly bombing of a relief convoy last week near Aleppo, say the cease-fire failed almost from the beginning.