Grappling with agonising uncertainty, Syrian refugees living in Turkey wait for news of relatives stuck on the Syrian side of the border after fleeing Russian and regime offensives in the Aleppo region.
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Amid this week’s fighting, regime forces were able to cut off a vital supply line to Turkey, raising the spectre of a full siege of the city of Aleppo.
“Our teams are ready to provide them with water and food as soon as they arrive”, Turkish Red Crescent head Ahmet Lutfi Akar said. The Bashar Al Assad regime, backed by Russian jets and Iranian military strategists, has launched an all-out assault on rebel forces around Aleppo. It appears aimed at eventually encircling the contested city of Aleppo, Syria’s largest.
More than 260,000 people have died in Syria’s conflict and more than half the population has been displaced.
World leaders pledged more than $10 billion Thursday to help fund schools, shelter and jobs for refugees from Syria’s civil war, money that British Prime Minister David Cameron said “will save lives, will give hope, will give people the chance of a future”.
Opposition forces and some 350,000 civilians inside rebel-held Aleppo city now face the prospect of a government siege, a tactic that has been employed to devastating effect against other former rebel strongholds such as Homs.
“It is deeply disturbing that the initial steps of the talks have been undermined by the continuous lack of sufficient humanitarian access and by a sudden increase of aerial bombings and military activities within Syria”, said Ban.
“You have one million residents in Aleppo, 500,000 in the government-controlled part of the city and 500,000 in the opposition dominated part of the city”, Gerges said.
Russia’s United Nations ambassador says Moscow plans to present new ideas on how to restart Syria peace talks, including a cease-fire, during a meeting of key countries in Munich on February 11.
Syrian opposition groups said about 30,000 to 40,000 people are on the move across Aleppo province after fleeing their homes.
Local media activist group al-Buraq Media published this video on Thursday that purports to show the aftermath of Russian airstrikes on the Mashhad neighborhood in Aleppo.
“Thousands of people, mainly families with women and children, are waiting to enter Turkey”, director Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP.
Iran, Russia and Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement are propping up the Alawite-led Assad government, while Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar back the more moderate Sunni-dominated opposition, along with the US, UK and France.
Turkey says it has taken in more than 2.5 million Syrians since the war began in 2011.
Syrian state TV and a monitoring group said the army and its allies had seized the town of Ratyan north of Aleppo, building on gains made earlier in the week.
The Syrian government offensive comes after the collapse of peace talks earlier this week. Relations between Turkey, a North Atlantic Treaty Organisation member, and Russia hit their worst in recent memory in November after Turkey shot down a Russian warplane Ankara said had violated Turkish airspace from Syria.
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“Those (who do so) will return to their countries in coffins”, he said, adding that no ceasefire would be possible unless borders were sealed.
