Refuge from a hell on earth - Massacres in besieged Aleppo

IN June 1944, the French village of Oradour-sur-Glane was razed and 642 of its residents, women and children included, were massacred by a Nazi Waffen-SS company. 

After the war, Charles de Gaulle ordered the ruins be maintained as a permanent war memorial. For some years now, Aleppo has seemed, though on an entirely different scale, a modern, dystopian Oradour-sur-Glane in the making.

Tragically, yesterday’s warning-cum-plea from the UN’s human rights office that pro-Syrian regime forces have, in the final rebel strongholds of eastern Aleppo, been executing civilians on the spot, makes that comparison all the more valid and chilling. Jens Laerke, a UN spokesman, said it appeared as if there had been a “complete meltdown of humanity“ in the once-magnificent city.