THU 28 - 3 - 2024
 
Date: Nov 28, 2016
Source: The Daily Star
Aleppo advance displaces thousands
Associated Press
BEIRUT: Simultaneous advances by Syrian government and Kurdish-led forces into eastern Aleppo Sunday set off a tide of displacement inside the divided city, with thousands of residents evacuating their premises, and threatened to cleave the opposition’s enclave.

Rebel defenses collapsed as government forces pushed into the city’s Sakhour neighborhood, coming within 1 kilometer of commanding a corridor in eastern Aleppo for the first time since rebels swept into the city in 2012, according to Syrian state media and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights activist group.

Kurdish-led forces operating autonomously of the rebels and the government meanwhile seized the Bustan al-Basha neighborhood, allowing thousands of civilians to flee the decimated district to the predominantly Kurdish Sheikh Maqsoud, in the city’s north, according to Ahmad Hiso Araj, an official with the Syrian Democratic Forces.

The government’s push, backed by thousands of Shiite militia fighters from Lebanon, Iraq, and Iran, and under the occasional cover of the Russian air force, has laid waste to Aleppo’s eastern neighborhoods.

An estimated quarter-million people are trapped in wretched conditions in the city’s rebel-held eastern districts since the government sealed its siege of the enclave in late August. Food supplies are running perilously low, the U.N. warned Thursday, and a relentless air assault by government forces has damaged or destroyed every hospital in the area.

Residents in east Aleppo said in distressed messages on social media that thousands of people were fleeing to the city’s government-controlled western neighborhoods, away from the government’s merciless assault, or deeper into opposition-held eastern Aleppo.

“The situation in besieged Aleppo [is] very very bad, thousands of eastern residents are moving to the western side of the city,” said Khaled Khatib, a photographer for the Syrian Civil Defense search-and-rescue group, also known as the White Helmets. “Aleppo is going to die,” he posted on Twitter.

The Britain-based Observatory, which monitors the conflict through a network of local contacts, said around 1,700 civilians had escaped to government-controlled areas and another 2,500 to Kurdish authorities.

More than 250 civilians have been killed in the government’s bombardment of eastern Aleppo over past 13 days, according to the Observatory.

Locals reported thousands more were moving within the eastern neighborhoods, away from the front lines, but staying inside areas of opposition control.

Syrian state media reported government forces had seized the Jabal Badro neighborhood and entered Sakhour Sunday after it took control of the Masaken Hanano neighborhood Saturday.

Syrian state TV broadcast a video Saturday showing a teary reunion between a soldier and his family after nearly five years apart, according to the report. It said the family had been trapped in Masaken Hanano.

The Lebanese Al-Manar TV channel reported from the neighborhood Sunday morning, showing workers and soldiers clearing debris against a backdrop of bombed-out buildings on both sides of a wide thoroughfare. Al-Manar is operated by Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant group aligned with the Syrian government.

The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces’ advance into Bustan al-Basha dealt the opposition a further blow. Rebels and opposition figures have long accused the SDF and its predecessor groups of conspiring with the government to quash a nationwide revolt.

Araj denied there was any coordination between government and Kurdish-led forces.

Meanwhile, Anadolu also reported Sunday that Daesh (ISIS) had used chemical weapons against Turkish-backed Syrian opposition fighters in northern Syria, wounding 22. The report cited a statement by the chief of general staff’s office. The report could not be immediately verified independently.



 
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