Syrian president says fighting terrorists 'is like a video game'

There are credible reports of civilians in the embattled Syrian city of Aleppo being summarily executed, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told members of the Security Council at an emergency meeting Tuesday.

Speaking as Syrian government forces recaptured the city from Sunni rebel groups, Ban said civilian deaths and injuries were continuing "at a brutal pace."

"Syrian authorities have systematically denied us the presence on the ground to directly verify reports. ... This does not mean that the reports that we are receiving are not credible," he said.

Meanwhile, Syrian President Bashar Assad, in his first interview since retaking Aleppo, told Russian RT news Wednesday that "fighting terrorists is like a video game."

"You can destroy your enemy in the video game, but the video game will generate and regenerate thousands of enemies, so you cannot deal with it in the American way: just killing, just killing. This is not our goal," Assad said.

He said that U.S. President Barack Obama's announcement of a waiver for arming unspecified rebel groups in Syria, shortly before Islamic State launched a massive attack to retake the ancient city of Palmyra earlier this week, was no coincidence.

"The announcement of the lifting of that embargo is related directly to the attack on Palmyra and to the support of other terrorists outside Aleppo, because when they are defeated in Aleppo, the United States and the West, they need to support their proxies somewhere else," Assad said.

"The crux of that announcement is to create more chaos, because the United States creates chaos in order to manage this chaos."

Assad said Islamic State "came with different and huge manpower and firepower that [they] never had before during this attack, and they attacked on a huge front, tens of kilometers that could be a front of armies. ISIS could only have done that with the support of states. Not state; states."

Also Wednesday, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Raad al Hussein expressed shock at the apparent collapse of a deal enabling the evacuation of thousands of civilians trapped in eastern Aleppo. He said the resumption of heavy bombardment by Syrian government forces and their allies on civilian-populated areas was "almost certainly a violation of international law and most likely constitutes war crimes."

"The way this deal was dangled in front of this battered and beleaguered population, causing them to hope they might indeed live to see another day, and then snatched away just half a day later is also outrageously cruel," Hussein said in a statement issued by his office.

"Any evacuation of civilians in eastern Aleppo must be carried out in compliance with international law. The Syrian government has a clear responsibility to ensure its people are safe, and is palpably failing to take this opportunity to do so."

Hussein added that the buses ferrying evacuees had reportedly been blocked by pro-government militia.

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