The World Health Organisation wants safe routes to be set up immediately to evacuate sick and wounded Syrians from besieged parts of the city of Aleppo. A spokeswoman said there were only 35 doctors left to care for hundreds of patients trapped in the rebel-held east, and that the number was rising. Medical supplies are also running out, and there is a shortage of blood.<br/><br/>Russian-backed Syrian government forces launched an all-out assault on the east on Thursday after a truce collapsed. Since then, the intense and sustained aerial bombardment of Aleppo and its surrounding countryside has killed at least 248 people, almost all of them civilians. <br/><br/>At a news conference in Geneva yesterday, WHO spokeswoman Fadela Chaib said the escalation of fighting was claiming more victims every day and called for the immediate establishment of humanitarian routes to evacuate the sick and wounded from the eastern part of the city.