Civilians flee as Syrian regime advances in rebel Aleppo

ALEPPO — Syrian pro-government forces pushed deeper into rebel-held eastern Aleppo on Tuesday, forcing civilians to flee as the regime pressed an assault to recapture the entire city.

Military aircraft dropped leaflets over east Aleppo, urging rebels to distribute food to civilians, leave the area and allow residents to do so too.

The regime pounded the east of the city with air strikes and barrel bombs as ground troops advanced in the key eastern neighbourhood of Masaken Hanano, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

A week into the latest round of fighting for the city, the regime controls around a third of the district, the observatory said.

The district has been shelled heavily during the war, and many residents had already fled, but the latest fighting prompted even the last holdouts to leave.

Milad Shahabi, a member of the local council, told AFP that residents were fleeing to southern parts of the opposition-controlled east.

Masaken Hanano was the first Aleppo district to fall to rebels in 2012, and is strategically vital.

Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman said that if regime forces manage to take the district they will be able to "cut off the northern parts of rebel-held Aleppo from the rest of the opposition-held districts".

At least 143 civilians, including 19 children, have been killed in the city's east since the latest assault began on November 15, according to the Britain-based monitor.

Another 16 civilians, including 10 children, have been killed in rebel fire on western Aleppo, it said.

Eight rebels were killed Tuesday, the observatory added, including a senior commander from the powerful Ahrar Al Sham militia.

Government troops, backed by Lebanon's Shiite Hizbollah group and Russian and Iranian forces, are battling rebels on several fronts inside opposition-held districts.

The head of Iran’s veterans’ affairs office said Tuesday that more than 1,000 combatants sent from Iran to fight in support of President Bashar Assad have been killed in the conflict. 

Iran has sent military advisers, as well as fighters recruited from Afghanistan and Pakistan, to work with Assad’s forces. 

Trapped civilians  

The renewed fighting comes amid international concern for the fate of more than 250,000 civilians trapped in besieged rebel-held areas of Aleppo.

Despite searing international criticism, there is little sign that the government advance will be halted.

On Tuesday, Assad’s key backer Russia accused the UN’s Syria envoy of torpedoing a Security Council resolution to revive peace talks between the regime and opposition.

“The United Nations in the form of its special representative Staffan de Mistura has been sabotaging the resolution for more than six months,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in televised remarks.

The resolution calls for “holding inclusive Syrian talks without preconditions,” he said. 

De Mistura was in Damascus over the weekend to discuss a humanitarian plan and a truce proposal for Aleppo, but both were rejected by the government.

The plan called for aid deliveries to the east and the evacuation of the sick and wounded. Fighters would leave, but an opposition administration would remain at least temporarily.

Syria’s Foreign Minister Walid Muallem said Sunday the truce plan would “reward terrorists” and insisted the government would recapture the east.

Biggest victory yet  

Recapturing east Aleppo would be the government’s biggest victory yet in Syria’s five-year conflict and deal a potentially decisive blow to the opposition.

The city was once the country’s economic powerhouse, but it has been ravaged by the war that has killed 300,000 people since it began with anti-government protests in March 2011.

For the past four years, Aleppo has been divided between the government-controlled west and rebel-held east, which has been sealed off from the outside world since the army surrounded it in mid-July.

No food aid has entered since then, and locals suffer severe shortages of food, fuel, electricity and water.

Rebels have tried several times to break the siege, without success.

The UN’s aid chief Stephen O’Brien on Monday slammed the use of sieges in Aleppo and elsewhere. In remarks to the Security Council, he said nearly
1 million Syrians were living under blockade.

Emile Hokayem, a senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said there was very little the world could now do to prevent the whole city falling to pro-regime forces.

“You can’t send weaponry in any more, all the supply roads are cut, and you won’t intervene from the air because of the costs and the risks,” he told AFP.

“There was a time to do something about Aleppo... but now it’s too late.”