Black smoke today billows over the streets of Aleppo as the desperate city sets ablaze mounds of tyres to hide targets from Syrian government warplanes and Russian attack helicopters. Five out of the nine remaining hospitals were hit last week; 300,000 people, many thousands of them children, are trapped without water or electricity. Food is running out fast.
This grisly siege is the Sarajevo of the 21st century, and we are ignoring it. Wrapped up in the terror attacks on our own continent, by the paralysis of leadership in the United States, we are missing Aleppo. By the time we wake up it will be too late: the city, once Syria’s commercial hub, its workshop and marketplace, will be empty or flattened. Either outcome is