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UN agency finds 250,000 people in Syria's Aleppo with no safe drinking water

Xinhua, September 28, 2016 Adjust font size:

Some 250,000 people in eastern Aleppo, a city in northern Syria, are still without safe drinking water after a pumping station was hit by attacks on Sept. 22, the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) reported on Tuesday.

"This leaves more than 100,000 children in danger of outbreaks of waterborne diseases, which can be life-threatening," Farhan Haq, the deputy UN spokesman, said at a daily news briefing here, quoting the UNICEF report.

"UNICEF is assisting urgent efforts to repair the pumping station," Haq said.

Battles continued in Aleppo on Sunday coupled with airstrikes on rebel-held areas, as Western powers dropped political barrel bombs on Russia and the Syrian government.

Several rebel factions succeeded on Sunday to retake the strategic Handarat camp for Palestinian refugees in the northern province of Aleppo, just a day after the Syrian army and Palestinian fighters wrested control over it.

In early August, UNICEF said that the humanitarian crisis was escalating in Aleppo, once the largest city in Syria, as two million people have lost their access to running water.

An escalation of fighting and attacks has damaged the electricity networks that are needed to pump water supplies throughout the city, according to the UN agency.

The renewed military showdown in Aleppo came just days after a Russia-U.S. brokered truce expired last Monday with no extension, due to the rising tension between Russia and the United States.

The Syrian army said in a statement that the rebels violated the week-long truce over 300 times, adding that the U.S.-led coalition struck positions of the Syrian army during the truce in Deir al-Zour, killing 90 soldiers, which was deemed by Russia as the biggest violation to the truce. Enditem