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Aleppo: Syrian army resumes bombardment of city as fragile ceasefire crumbles | Aleppo: Syrian army resumes bombardment of city as fragile ceasefire crumbles |
(35 minutes later) | |
The Syrian army will resume its military operations in Aleppo, the Russian Defence Ministry has said, after reported rebel infringement of the fragile ceasefire. | The Syrian army will resume its military operations in Aleppo, the Russian Defence Ministry has said, after reported rebel infringement of the fragile ceasefire. |
Rebel officials and a souce close the regime told AFP on Wednesday that the deal was on hold after government shelling hit a rebel neighbourhood, dashing the hopes of trapped civilians for a truce. | |
A Turkey and Russia brokered ceasefire deal to bring peace to what a UN representative described as a "meltdown of humanity" went into effect on Tuesday evening. It was supposed to include the evacuation of up to 5,000 people to neighbouring rebel-held Idlib province. | |
However, Lebanese al-Manar TV broadcast footage showing the Syrian government's green evacuation buses leaving the agreed checkpoint without any passengers, indicating the evacuations will be futher delayed and the short-lived promise of a ceasefire is over. | |
Russia's Interfax news agency said that rebel attacks at dawn on government strongholds in the northeast of Aleppo had been repelled, and pro-government forces would continue the operation to quash resistance in the last opposition neighbourhoods. | |
Between 50,000 - 100,000 people are thought to still be trapped in the last slivers of rebel territory in east Aleppo after the Syrian army and Iran-backed militas captured all but a few remaining neighbourhoods in the divided city on Monday. | |
Reports of the executions of 82 civilians by pro-government militias, including women and children, have alarmed rights groups and the international community, as has the destruction and death caused by incessant bombing and a collapse of medical aid. | |
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's forces have all but retaken the city, which after four years of fierce fighting has become the epicentre of Syria's bloody civil war. | |
Rebel supply lines were cut off in July, and an intense Russian-backed bombing campaign since September has killed hundreds, decimated medical infrastructure, and bought the last urban rebel stronghold in Syria to its knees. | |
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that he expected all rebel resistance to crumble within the next two to three days. | |
Residents and activists in the rebel-controlled parts of the city have expressed fears that they will be detained, tortured and killed for resistance to the regime - including humanitarian workers, doctors and teachers. | |
"Anyone who knows anything about the Assad regime should know what to expect. Death will be a wish for those captured and deemed [to be] opposition, weather [sic] military or civil," one wrote in a Whatsapp message to journalists. | |
Recapturing Aleppo will be Mr Assad's biggest victory yet in the six-year-old war - but with two thirds of Syria still controlled by the US-backed Free Syrian Army umbrella of rebel factions, extremist groups and the Kurds in the north, the complex conflict is far from over. | |
To date more than 400,000 people have lost their lives and half of Syria's population displaced from their homes by fighting, the UN says. |