Syria: Regime's war of attrition on Aleppo

[Sally]

It looks like there will be no end to this bombing.


Syria: Regime's war of attrition on Aleppo
May 04, 2016 - 12:00:00 am

A Syrian man walks past destroyed buildings on May 2, 2016, in Aleppo's Bab al-Hadid neighbourhood which was targeted recently by regime air strikes. AFP / KARAM AL-MASRI



ALEPPO, Syria: For almost two weeks, Syria’s Assad regime has waged a war of attrition against opposition-held districts of Aleppo in an attempt to cut the city off from the outside world.

The Assad regime, with Russian air support, has managed to cut the humanitarian corridor linking Turkey to Aleppo and surround opposition-held areas of the city from the north.

Now the regime is trying to cut the Castello-Handarat road, which currently represents the only way out of central Aleppo.



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Syria: Regime's war of attrition on Aleppo?

 

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Samantha givin' Assad hell...

US Envoy: Regime Actions in Aleppo Should ‘Revolt’ UN; The War Only Ends When Assad Goes
May 4, 2016 – U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Samantha Power told the U.N. Security Council Wednesday the world body should be revolted and galvanized by the fact that a U.N. member state was responsible for the fact that Aleppo, once Syria’s largest city, is “burning.”

“The party primarily responsible for Aleppo burning is a U.N. member state. That should revolt us,” she said. “The party responsible is a U.N. member state indifferent, cold to the ghastly suffering of its people. That should galvanize and unite us.” Power said the only way the war would end would be “a political transition away from [President Bashar] Assad,” and that the U.S. would work with Russia to facilitate that. More than four-and-a-half years after first calling on Assad to step down, the administration is doubling down on its view that he must go if peace is to be achieved in Syria.

Assad’s Russian ally continues to dispute that his departure will have that result, pointing to the examples of Libya and Iraq. Power called on the regime’s supporters, especially Russia and Iran, to press it to meet its obligations to honor a negotiated truce or “cessation of hostilities.” The U.S. says the regime has carried out hundreds of airstrikes in the Aleppo area over the past two weeks. According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights more than 270 civilians have been killed as a result. Secretary of State John Kerry said the U.S. and Russia had reached agreement on an urgent effort aimed at getting the truce in Aleppo back on track, although the regime’s army said the agreement would only hold for 48 hours.

A day earlier, Kerry also reiterated the administration’s determination that Assad must go. He told reporters at the State Department that August 1 was the “target date” for a political transition in Syria – a transition based on the 2012 Geneva communique, which calls for a “transitional governing body,” to be formed on the basis of “mutual consent” between regime and rebel representatives. “We said that the target date for the transition to – is the 1st of August. So we’re now coming up to May,” he said. “So either something happens in these next few months or they are asking for a very different track.”

Kerry said if Assad thought he could carve out a section of Syria in the Aleppo area, the war would not end. “It is simply physically impossible for Assad to just carve out an area and pretend that he’s somehow going to make it safe while the underlying issues are unresolved in this war,” he said. “And as long as Assad is there, the opposition is not going to stop fighting him, one way or the other.” He said the U.S. was not alone in that assessment, adding that other parties involved in the diplomacy including Europeans, Gulf states and Turkey have all “said you can’t end this as long as Assad continues, because Assad cannot reunite the country. It’s that simple.” Kerry also warned about unspecified “repercussions” if Assad does not observe the agreed-upon truce. “If Assad does not adhere to this, there will clearly be repercussions, and one of them may be the total destruction of the ceasefire and they go back to war,” he said. “There may be even other repercussions that are being discussed, but that is for the future to determine.”

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IS jihadis and Syrian rebels may be winning the battle but losing the war...

Syrian Rebels Turn Tables on Regime as IS Loses Bastion
Aug 06, 2016 | Jihadists and rebels captured strategic military positions on the edges of Syria's second city Aleppo on Saturday, turning the tables on Russian-backed regime forces besieging the city.

To the northeast, a Western-backed alliance of Arab and Kurdish fighters scored a major victory against the Islamic State group in the town of Manbij after a fierce two-month battle. The developments have rocked the key northern province of Aleppo, a microcosm of Syria's topsy-turvy, multi-front war that has killed more than 280,000 people. Rebel and regime forces have fought for control of the provincial capital of the same name since mid-2012, transforming the former economic powerhouse into a divided, bombed-out city. On Saturday, opposition fighters and allied jihadists captured fresh territory south of Aleppo in a bid to cut off regime forces and open up a new route into besieged rebel-held districts. "The Army of Conquest on Saturday took control of the armament school, where there is a large amount of ammunition, and a large part of the artillery school" at a military academy south of the city, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

US-backed Kurdish and Arab fighters advance into the Islamic State jihadist group's bastion of Manbij, in northern Syria.​

The coalition of rebels, Islamists, and jihadists "is about to cut off, by gunfire, the supply route into government-controlled districts" of the city, Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman said. That road passes through a southwestern suburb of Aleppo called Ramussa and is the last route into the city used by regime troops. Opposition forces in the city -- encircled by the government since July 17 -- are hoping to expand their control in the area and use that route themselves.

- IS defeat in Manbij -

"The regime forces are in a very difficult position despite Russian air support," Abdel Rahman said. The former Al-Nusra Front -- renamed Jabhat Fateh al-Sham after breaking from Al-Qaida -- on Saturday announced having captured the two military academies and a third military position. Drone footage posted by the group online showed a series of explosions in some of those buildings, followed by massive columns of billowing black smoke. State media reported fighting in the three locations and said the army had dispatched reinforcements to take on "thousands of terrorist fighters". Regime forces, with air support by key ally Moscow, had initially been able to hold off the rebels, who launched their offensive on Sunday. Also on Saturday, the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces handed a major defeat to Islamic State group jihadists in the town of Manbij. The Britain-based Observatory said the SDF "took control of Manbij on Saturday and are combing the city in search of the last remaining jihadists."

The town had served as a key transit point along IS's supply route from the Turkish border to Raqa, the de facto capital of its self-styled Islamic "caliphate". The SDF launched its offensive on May 31 with air support from the US-led air coalition bombing IS in Syria since September 2014. It encircled the town in early June and surged into it later that month, but its assault was slowed by a fierce jihadist fightback using suicide attackers and car bombs. A spokesman for the Manbij Military Council -- a key component of the SDF -- said fighting was still ongoing in the town. "The battles are continuing near the centre of the town. We are in control of 90 percent of Manbij," Sherfan Darwish told AFP. Formed in October 2015, the SDF has seized swathes of territory in north and northeast Syria from IS. Syria's conflict first erupted in March 2011 with anti-government protests but has since evolved into a fully-fledged war largely dominated by jihadist groups. As well as killing more than 280,000 people, it has forced half the population to flee their homes, including nearly five million seeking refuge in neighboring countries.

Syrian Rebels Turn Tables on Regime as IS Loses Bastion | Military.com

 

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This news has been rejected so far and we have to wait for more reports.

 

[waltky]

Kids suffer the most...

Children of Syria's Aleppo bear brunt of violent onslaught
Sep 30,`16 -- The 6-year-old girl was found trapped under the rubble of her home, destroyed by an airstrike in Syria's rebel-held city of Aleppo. "Dust!" she wailed as rescue workers pried away the stones and debris on top of her, finally freeing her and placing her on a stretcher as she screamed for her father. "Forget the dust. I'll wash your face and give you water. Come on, sweetheart," one rescuer said.

Bruised and battered but alive, Ghazl Qassem was among the lucky survivors of the attack earlier this week. Four days later, rescue workers were still digging Friday through the rubble of the apartment building after pulling out the bodies of 20 people, including nine children, most from Ghazl's family. They were searching for at least three others believed inside. At least 96 children are among the 320 people killed in Aleppo since a cease-fire collapsed on Sept. 19, according to UNICEF, as Syrian and Russian warplanes barrage the city's eastern opposition neighborhoods, trying to crush more than five years of resistance there. Almost a third of the 840 people wounded over the same period are children, according to the World Health Organization. "Aleppo is one of the most dangerous places in the world, and in the last week it has become perhaps the most dangerous place in the world for children." Juliette Touma, regional chief of communications for the U.N children's agency told The Associated Press.

Nearly 300,000 people - including 100,000 children - are trapped in Aleppo's rebel-held eastern districts, a pocket of resistance some eight miles long and three miles wide that civil defense workers say has been hit by 1,900 bombs in the past week. The campaign has wreaked destruction on hospitals, clinics, residential buildings, water stations and electric generators. Parents desperately struggling to keep their families safe fear the threat of an imminent ground offensive. They hold little hope for the future, with no regular schooling and little access to nutritious food. Images of wounded and screaming children, covered in dust or being pulled out of rubble, have become a daily reality in Aleppo. "We are totally resigned to God's will," said Khaled Sakka, a father of 10 children, all under the age of 14. He, his three wives and the children all sleep in one room in the middle of the house, the only safety measure they have against the nightly airstrikes. "The bombs are bringing down five-story buildings. They are even reaching bunkers," he said.

Wounded children are often left untreated, sometimes to die, in Aleppo's overwhelmed hospitals. Only 30 doctors remain in opposition-held neighborhoods: One physician for every 10,000 people, compared to a peacetime standard of one for every 1,000, Touma said. "It is very difficult to know how many (children) are traumatized, but one would imagine every single one is impacted by the horrors, especially with the intensification of the violence in the past week," she said. So-called bunker-busting bombs, designed to target underground structures, have been widely used, possibly to crush tunnels or bunkers used as refuge by the thousands of rebel fighters defending the districts.

But the powerful bombs also threaten the underground shelters where civilians take refuge and where children go to school. For the past several years, most classes have been held in basements because of the constant fighting and threat of airstrikes. "The use of bunker-busting bombs means there is literally nowhere we can keep children safe, " said Nick Finney of Save the Children, which runs 13 schools in eastern Aleppo, eight of them held underground. "We're now more likely to see children being pulled from the rubble or treated on the floor of a hospital than sitting at a school desk."

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See also:

Russia warns against US attack on Syrian forces
Oct 1,`16 -- Russia warned the United States Saturday against carrying out any attacks on Syrian government forces, saying it would have repercussions across the Middle East as government forces captured a hill on the edge of the northern city of Aleppo under the cover of airstrikes.

Meanwhile, airstrikes on Aleppo struck a hospital in the eastern rebel-held neighborhood of Sakhour on Saturday, putting it out of service, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and the Local Coordination Committees. They said at least one person was killed in the airstrike. Russian news agencies quoted Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova as saying that a U.S. intervention against the Syrian army "will lead to terrible, tectonic consequences not only on the territory of this country but also in the region on the whole." She said regime change in Syria would create a vacuum that would be "quickly filled" by "terrorists of all stripes."

U.S.-Russian tensions over Syria have escalated since the breakdown of a cease-fire last month, with each side blaming the other for its failure. Syrian government forces backed by Russian warplanes have launched a major onslaught on rebel-held parts of Aleppo. Syrian troops pushed ahead in their offensive in Aleppo on Saturday capturing the strategic Um al-Shuqeef hill near the Palestinian refugee camp of Handarat that government forces captured from rebels earlier this week, according to state TV. The hill is on the northern edge of the Aleppo, Syria's largest city and former commercial center. The powerful ultraconservative Ahrar al-Sham militant group said rebels regained control Saturday of several positions they lost in Aleppo in the Bustan al-Basha neighborhood.

State media said 13 people were wounded when rebels shelled the central government-held neighborhood of Midan. In the rebel-held portion of Aleppo, opposition activist Ahmad Alkhatib described the hospital, known as M10, as one of the largest in Aleppo. He posted photographs on his Twitter account showing the damage including beds covered with dust, a hole in its roof and debris covering the street outside. A doctor at the hospital told the Aleppo Media Center, an activist collective, that thousands of people were treated in the compound in the past adding that two people were killed in Saturday's airstrikes and several were wounded. "A real catastrophe will hit medical institutions in Aleppo if the direct shelling continues to target hospitals and clinics," said the doctor whose name was not given. He said the whole hospital is out of service.

Opposition activists have blamed the President Bashar Assad's forces and Russia for airstrikes that hit Civil Defense units and clinics in the city where eastern rebel-held neighborhoods are besieged by government forces and pro-government militiamen. Opposition activists have blamed the President Bashar Assad's forces and Russia for airstrikes that hit Civil Defense units and clinics in the city where eastern rebel-held neighborhoods are besieged by government forces and pro-government militiamen. On Friday, the international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders demanded that the Syrian government and its allies "halt the indiscriminate bombing that has killed and wounded hundreds of civilians-many of them children," over the past week in Aleppo.

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Kinda hard to negotiate with someone who doesn't want to negotiate...

US Suspends Contacts with Russia on Syria
Oct 03, 2016 | WASHINGTON — The State Department says the U.S. is suspending bilateral contacts with Russia over Syria. That comes after last week's threat by Secretary of State John Kerry to suspend contacts amid new attacks on the city of Aleppo.

The department said in a statement Monday that Russia had not lived up to the terms of an agreement last month to restore the cease-fire and ensure sustained deliveries of humanitarian aid to besieged cities.

Map shows areas controlled by competing groups in and around the city of Aleppo, Syria​

As part of the suspension, the U.S. is withdrawing personnel that it had dispatched to take part in the creation of a joint U.S.-Russia center. That center was to have coordinated military cooperation and intelligence if the cease-fire had taken hold. The suspension will not affect communications between the two countries aimed at de-conflicting counter-terrorism operations in Syria.

US Suspends Contacts with Russia on Syria | Military.com

See also:

Putin Suspends Weapons-Grade Plutonium Deal with US
Oct 03, 2016 — President Vladimir Putin on Monday suspended a Russia-U.S. deal on the disposal of weapons-grade plutonium, a move that comes amid escalating tensions over Syria between Moscow and Washington.

Putin's decree released by the Kremlin cited Washington's "unfriendly actions" and the United States' inability to fulfill its obligations under the 2000 deal as reasons for the move. However, the decree says that the weapons-grade plutonium that has fallen under the agreement will be kept away from weapons programs. Under the agreement, which was expanded in 2006 and 2010, Russia and the U.S. each were to dispose of 34 metric tons of weapons-grade plutonium, enough material for about 17,000 nuclear warheads. When it was signed, the deal was touted as an example of successful U.S.-Russian cooperation on nuclear non-proliferation.

Russia said last year it had started up a plant that produces mixed-oxide commercial nuclear reactor fuel known as MOX from weapons-grade plutonium. Meanwhile, the construction of a similar U.S. plant in South Carolina has been years behind schedule and billions of dollars over budget. The U.S. administration wants to cancel the Savannah River Site's MOX project and use an alternative method for disposing of excess plutonium. Putin pointed to the stalled plant earlier this year to accuse the U.S. of failing to meet its end of the deal. He also argued that the policy change would give the U.S. "return potential," or a chance to recycle the material back into the weapons-grade plutonium.

Commenting on Putin's move, the Russian Foreign Ministry said Monday that the U.S. has "done all it could to destroy the atmosphere encouraging cooperation." It cited U.S. sanctions against Russia over the Ukrainian crisis and the deployment of NATO forces near Russian borders as examples. "We would like to bring Washington back to understanding that it can't introduce sanctions against us in areas where it's quite painless for the Americans, and at the same time continue selective cooperation in areas it sees as advantageous," it said. A strain in U.S.-Russian ties escalated in recent weeks followed the collapse of a truce in Syria and the Syrian army's massive onslaught in Aleppo under the cover of Russian warplanes. The Russian Foreign Ministry said Moscow would be ready to restore the plutonium agreement if the U.S. takes Russian concerns into account.

Putin Suspends Weapons-Grade Plutonium Deal with US | Military.com