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UN Fears for Hundreds of Thousands if Syria Troops Encircle Aleppo

According to Reuters the United Nations are anxious about the many civilians caught in the middle of all this.

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The government has employed so-called “starve or surrender” tactics elsewhere in the country to regain rebel-held territory, most notably in the central city of Homs.

The UN warned that 300,000 people in eastern Aleppo city could be cut off from humanitarian aid if government forces encircle the area.

The recapture of Aleppo, once Syria’s commercial hub, would be a significant victory for both Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his Russian counterpart and key backer, Vladimir Putin.

Turkey is now host to 2.5 million Syrian refugees, the world’s largest refugee population.

The Syrian army and its allies have gained ground in recent weeks in the provinces of Latakia and Aleppo, which border Turkey to the north, and Deraa, which borders Jordan to the south. They have also advanced against Islamic State to the east of Aleppo.

That is why we have been asking for worldwide community to help Turkey.

The WFP also said it had begun food distribution at camps near the town of Azaz for the wave of newly displaced people gathered near the Bab al-Salam crossing.

On Monday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she and Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu agreed that Wednesday’s North Atlantic Treaty Organisation meeting should discuss how the alliance “can be helpful with the surveillance situation” in the Mediterranean and assist the Turkish coast guard and the European Union’s border agency.

A report from Washington-based The Syria Institute and PAX, a peace organisation based in the Netherlands, said Tuesday that more than one million Syrians are living under siege.

The Turkish government fears that fierce fighting in Syria’s Aleppo province will spark the arrival of up to 600,000 refugees at its border in a “worst case scenario”, Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus has said.

He also said no voices had been raised in protest against the “barbaric actions of terrorists” when they assaulted Syrian regime forces in the past.

“We are anxious that opening the gates will lead to an increase in refugees”, said Burak Kacacaoglu, a spokesman for the non-governmental Islamic charity group, Humanitarian Relief Foundation. “Either they will die beneath the bombings… or we will open our borders”.

Lavrov is set to meet with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Thursday in Munich. “Russia’s activities from Aleppo and in the region are making it much more hard to be able to come to the table and be able to have a serious conversation”, Kerry told reporters.

Despite complaints from the West and the Syrian opposition, Russian Federation had not received any credible evidence of civilian deaths from airstrikes, Peskov said. He insisted Russian Federation was targeting only Islamist militants.

Away from the city, advances made by regime forces in the last week has underlined the effectiveness of Russian air strikes more so than any other point since Moscow’s intervention on September 30 a year ago.

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She said: “We have been, in the past few days, not just appalled but horrified by what has been caused in the way of human suffering for tens of thousands of people by bombing – primarily from the Russian side”. State TV said the blast occurred near a police officers’ club, inflicting casualties.

Hoarding in Syria's largest city as government advances