Aleppo: As siege and bombardment escalate, 250.000 lives sentenced to death

Air strikes and intense artillery fire have pounded the rebel-held east of the Syrian city of Aleppo for the fourth day, and Assad regime escalated its ground operations to retrieve the city, as reports said that 275.000 civilians trapped there will be dead in 20 days if no aids were delivered.

There are about 275,000 people trapped by the siege of eastern Aleppo, where civilians are suffering through daily bombing, including by bunker-buster and incendiary weapons, and through starvation, as limited supplies run out and aid convoys are blocked from the city.

On Friday 29 October the rebel forces started a new military operation to break the siege, employing heavy shelling and suicide car bombs, was mainly focused on the city’s western edge by rebels based in the countryside outside Aleppo.

However, the rebels’ attack was repelled in many fronts by Assad regime’s forces and the battles have slowed down after the fourth day, as Assad regime deployed hundreds of fighters to the area and intensified its airstrikes.

Government forces said that they were preparing a major offensive to push opposition fighters out of the besieged eastern half of the city, and started it again on Tuesday.

Children hospital targeted

In the four days since bombardment resumed on eastern Aleppo, the Observatory says it has documented 65 deaths and hundreds of injuries in east Aleppo, and four deaths and dozens of injuries in government-held west Aleppo as a result of rebel rocket fire.

The only children’s hospital in besieged Aleppo is out of action after being bombed as it treated victims of a chlorine gas attack, forcing staff to evacuate babies in incubators and other patients injured over days of fierce bombardment.

There were so many air strikes across Aleppo that the White Helmets teams which rescue survivors from rubble and put out fires said they were struggling to reach all the bomb sites. “[The city] is a mess,” said rescuer Ibrahim al-Haj.

The children’s hospital, which was also hit on Thursday, was forced to evacuate as its doctors treated victims of the chlorine attack who were struggling to breathe.

“We are moving the children’s hospital because it has been hit twice this week and is considered a full-on target,” the Independent Doctors Association said. “We took the decision to evacuate it today, to relocate the staff and patients elsewhere.”

It is believed the bomb was a vacuum missile, fired by Syrian government forces, the IDA said. Footage shot by an al-Jazeera reporter who was covering the aftermath of the chlorine gas attack showed the hospital plunged into darkness.

Bombing raids on the city have frequently targeted medical facilities, which have moved underground and sometimes shifted location in response.

Only 30 doctors are left now in eastern Aleppo and 4 hospitals to treat 250.000 besieged civilians.

Assad regime pushing on the ground

Assad regime has unleashed enormous firepower and deployed hundreds of fighters to the area to break the rebels’ resistance.

The regime’s forces’ persistent and the intensive airstrikes forced the rebels to leave the areas they took during their last offensive.

Assad regime said on Saturday that its forces captured the Dahiyet al-Assad district of western Aleppo , reversing all the gains made by rebels two weeks into their counter-attack against government-held areas.

Fighting was reported on the southern and eastern periphery of the rebel-held area on Friday. The Observatory said Friday’s clashes were the fiercest in Aleppo this week.

Sources on both sides said pro-government militias were mobilised in large numbers.

An official in the Levant Front rebel group, which fights under the Free Syrian Army banner, told Reuters that the pro-government forces appeared to be seeking to advance along a highway that bisects the rebel-held part of Aleppo.

His group lost a commander along with a number of his men in the fighting, he said. “The militias are coming in strongly in the areas they are trying to storm. There are few frontlines in Syria in general at the moment, most of the focus of the regime and militias is in Aleppo,” he said.

A source on the government side confirmed large mobilisation by pro-Assad forces. The source said the shelling of recent days was in preparation for ground operations. A media unit run by Hezbollah, a Lebanese Shi’ite group fighting in support of Assad, said the army had made progress in northeastern Aleppo.

 

Not just death, Mass hunger awaits civilians in Aleppo

The last time eastern Aleppo was reached with significant humanitarian supplies was the beginning of July, as a major aid convoy sent to 75.000 civilians in Aleppo was destroyed in September, and then the UN was blocked from delivering more aids.

The White Helmets and Syrian American Medical Society made a statement about the situation in Aleppo, saying that the whole besieged part is threatened with starving to death if the siege lasted.