Rebels suffer heavy defeats
Syria's rebels lost all of the northern neighbourhoods of their stronghold in east Aleppo yesterday, as the army made significant advances in its offensive to recapture the entire city.
The regime gains have prompted an exodus of thousands of desperate civilians, some fleeing to districts held by the government or Kurdish forces, others heading south into areas still under opposition control.
"The situation is disastrous," said Ibrahim Abu Al-Leith, a spokesman for the White Helmets rescue group in the Ansari neighbourhood.
"There is mass displacement and morale is in the gutter," he said, his voice cracking with emotion.
The loss of eastern Aleppo would be a potentially devastating blow to Syria's rebels, who seized the area in 2012.
The opposition has steadily lost territory since Russia began an intervention to bolster President Bashar al-Assad in September 2015.
Yesterday, government forces seized the Sakhur, Haydariya and Sheikh Khodr districts, and Kurdish fighters took the Sheikh Fares neighbourhood from rebels, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor said.
"This is their (the rebels') worst defeat since they seized half the city in 2012," said Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman.
The advances left all of northeast Aleppo under government control.
On 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.
The United Nations said it was "deeply concerned" about the plight of civilians in the east, which has been besieged for more than four months, with international aid exhausted and food stocks desperately low.
The assault has been waged with heavy air strikes, barrel bomb attacks and artillery fire that has killed at least 225 civilians, including 27 children, in east Aleppo, according to the Observatory.
Rebel fire into the government-held west has also killed at least 27 civilians, among them 11 children, since November 15, the monitor says.
Syria's Al-Watan daily, which is close to the government, said the next stage of the operation would be "to divide the remaining (rebel-held) area into... districts that will be easily controlled and to capture them successively."
The advance would then "push the gunmen to turn themselves in... or accept national reconciliation under the terms of the Syrian state."
Fabrice Balanche, a Syria expert at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said the regime retaking east Aleppo "would be a turning point" as it would then hold "the five largest cities in Syria".
Assad's forces already control the capital Damascus, the central cities of Homs and Hama and the coastal city of Latakia.
More than 300,000 people have been killed since Syria's conflict began with anti-government protests in March 2011.
The war has also displaced over half the country's population, with millions fleeing across Syria's border to become refugees.
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