Rayhan Ahmed Topader :
Aleppo was once a place of culture and commerce, with a jewel of an old city that was on Unesco’s list of world heritage sites. Now, the five-year civil war that rages in Syria has left much of it destroyed and divided roughly in two, with President Bashar al-Assad’s forces controlling the west and the rebels the east. A month ago, government forces re-imposed a siege on the east, and launched an all-out assault to take full control of the city, accompanied by an intense and sustained aerial bombardment. Activists say the offensive has left hundreds of civilians dead, but the government and its ally Russia have denied targeting them and blamed rebel fighters for operating in residential areas. But what about the 275,000 people who are trapped there? Where are they getting their food from? Do they have enough water and medicine? Some of the heaviest bombardment so far on Aleppo has left rebel-held parts of the Syrian city virtually without medical facilities, observers say. The World Health Organization says all makeshift hospitals there are out of service, after five days of air and artillery strikes by government forces.
Other reports suggest that some hospitals are operational but people are too frightened to use them. A White House statement called the assault on hospitals “heinous”. The Syria Civil Defence, a volunteer group also known as the White Helmets, said that 61 civilians had been killed in Saturday’s air strikes on rebel-held eastern Aleppo.
Syria’s rebels lost all of the northern neighbour hoods of their stronghold in east Aleppo on Monday, as the army gained significant ground in its offensive to recapture the entire city. The regime’s advance has prompted an exodus of desperate civilians, some fleeing to districts held by the government or Kurdish forces, others heading south into areas still under rebel control.
The rebel losses suggested it was only a matter of time before all of east Aleppo -held by the opposition since 2012 – was back in government hands. The loss of the city’s east would be a potentially devastating blow for Syria’s rebels, who have seen their territory fall steadily to the government since Russia began an intervention to bolster President Bashar al-Assad in September 2015.On Monday, government forces seized the Sakhur, Haydariya and Sheikh Khodr districts, while Kurdish fighters took the Sheikh Fares neighbourhood from rebels, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor said.
Kurdish forces in Syria are officially aligned with neither the government nor the rebels, but the opposition views them as effectively allied with the regime in its bid to recapture Aleppo city.
The advances left all of northeast Aleppo in government hands, and prompted more civilians to join a wave of displacement from the east.
It is generally agreed that virtually all warehouses are now empty and tens of thousands of families are running out of food,” Civilians in eastern Aleppo have so far received basic care in makeshift hospitals. Aleppo, once Syria’s commercial and industrial hub, has been divided roughly in two since 2012, with the government controlling the west and rebels the east. On 22 September, two weeks after encircling the east and reimposing a siege on its estimated 275,000 residents, the army launched an all-out assault to take full control of the city with the help of Iranian-backed militias and the Russian air force. By the end of October, the strikes had killed more than 700 civilians in the east, while rocket fire had left scores dead in the west, according to the UN. Russia says its air force is active in other parts of Syria, but not operating over Aleppo. A statement by White House national security adviser Susan Rice condemned what she called “heinous actions”. The Syrian regime and its allies, Russia in particular, bear responsibility for the immediate and long-term consequences these actions have caused in Syria and beyond,” she said. UK International Development Secretary Priti Patel said the assault was part of “a systematic campaign to remove even the most basic of services left in the city” that left hundreds of thousands of people without access to healthcare.
Aleppo’s rebel-held Jabal Badro captured by the army” The rebels have lost control of all the neighbourhoods in the north of east Aleppo, and this is their worst defeat since they seized half the city in 2012,”said Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman. Syrian state news agency SANA reported that the capture of Haydariya and Sakhour as it looped footage showing some of the thousands of civilians who have fled east Aleppo in recent days as loyalist troops have advanced. The army renewed an operation to retake eastern Aleppo nearly two weeks ago, hoping to deal the opposition a potentially devastating blow. Tuesday last was the worst day we’ve witnessed since the war started. More than 1,500 families have fled to the regime-controlled west of the city. The bombing is horrific,” Ibrahim Abu Leith, Aleppo-based spokesman for the Civil Defence, told Al Jazeera.
On last Sunday night, the Observatory said nearly 10,000 civilians had fled the east, with around 6,000 moving to the Kurdish-held Sheikh Maqsud neighbourhood and 4,000 to government-held west Aleppo. Syrian state television showed footage of families disembarking from the green coaches regularly used to transport civilians and surrendering rebels from territory retaken by the government.
Civilians were also fleeing south to the remaining districts held by the rebels, arriving with little more than the clothes they were wearing, Dozens of families arrived in the south of the city overnight, and were being accommodated in some of the many empty buildings left behind by earlier waves of residents fleeing the city.
