Zunes described the physical destruction of Aleppo, Syria’s second largest city at the start of the war, as well as the effects on its people that too mirror Syria at large.
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OPPOSITION forces spearheaded by the group formerly known as the Nusra Front breached the Syrian government siege of Aleppo yesterday after the Qatari-backed rebels launched a fresh offensive.
The rebel forces victory appears to be short lived with Russian Federation intensifying its bombing campaign in and around the city of Aleppo in order to root out the radical Islamic extremists with ties to a multitude of known terror organizations.
The battle for Aleppo, Syria’s largest city and former commercial heart, is pivotal for the Syrian civil war.
They then pushed north-east into the district of Ramussa, linking up with rebel groups that had fought south from inside the city.
Jabhat Fateh al-Sham is the new incarnation of Jabhat al-Nusra, the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda.
Syrian state media continued to deny that rebels had taken parts of the road and reported that the air force was intensifying its strikes on “terrorists”, the term it uses to refer to much of the opposition. The Syrian American Medical Society (SAMS) charity group said that already depleted medical facilities were targeted by strikes 15 times in July.
The LCF posted pictures of loot from the artillery school, including armoured vehicles and ammunition.
Though few expect the reconstituted group to alter its ideology, it is now more seen as an efficient fighting force that helped to break the siege of Aleppo when the halting worldwide diplomacy of the USA and Russian Federation failed.
According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the rebels had broken the siege but the route was “not fully secure yet”.
A little more than a week later, Fatah Al Sham’s fighters have significantly contributed to ending the siege on eastern Aleppo, where rebel forces were looking increasingly desperate and ineffectual against government troops and Russian and Syrian air strikes and with support from their friends in the worldwide community dwindling.
Jaysh al Fateh – the rebel alliance comprised of Islamist groups as well as so-called moderates – released a statement Sunday declaring that its fighters would continue battling to capture the entire city, and vowing to protect residents. “We will not allow the repeat of the tragedy of sieges imposed elsewhere in Syria”.
The U.N. says there are about 18 besieged and hard-to-reach areas, nearly all encircled by government forces. The establishment of a corridor into Aleppo, where an estimated 300,000 people still live, preserves for the moment the survival of the opposition enclave. But the ferocity of government and Russian airstrikes the past 24 hours suggests the rebels have managed to deliver a major blow, one the regime now is desperately trying to reverse. The confederation’s push was a last chance opportunity to relieve the pressure on both the insurgent forces and the hundreds of thousands of civilians still residing in the city.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a monitoring group, said some 2,000 pro-regime fighters from Syria, Iraq, Iran and Lebanese Shiite movement Hezbollah had arrived in Aleppo since late Sunday. State news agency SANA said one girl was killed in rebel shelling of government areas near the frontline.
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The UN and humanitarian agencies have said conditions in isolated rebel-held east Aleppo have become very concerning.
