Baladi News – (Private)
Media activist, Majed Abdel Nour, revealed that International Coalition war planes participated in the battle of blockading the city of Aleppo, indicating that intensive airstrikes were conducted on cars by what was believed to be F16 fighter jets that achieved direct hits.
In a live interview with journalist Khaled Abo Almajd on Orient News official page, the activist indicated that “there is an international agreement to blockade the city of Aleppo”, adding that the Russian war forces carried out more than 120 airstrikes in average on Castello Road and its surrounding.
The activist said that the rebels are significantly responsible for the blockade because of their separation and infighting. However, he emphasized that “the international will, particularly the American one, is the main reason for Aleppo’s blockade, which aims at either finishing the revolution or exerting pressure on the rebels to accept a political settlement.”
After three years of war, the regime forces were able to cutoff the only remaining supply road to the opposition’s areas in Aleppo after bringing in foreign militias from Iran, Iraq, and Afghanistan, as well as Palestinian and Lebanese battalions, and getting aerial cover by the Russian war forces that targeted civilians’ infrastructure, including bakeries and hospitals, making life almost impossible.
The regime forces, supported by Russia, aim at tightening their grip on the economic capital and the second largest city in the country in order to impose their conditions in the upcoming round of negotiations in Geneva, which Russia is trying to postpone in order to achieve as many gains as possible on the ground.
The regime government declared on Wednesday that it completely captured Castello Road and its surroundings, knowing that the road had been already cutoff since the 7th of July. Then, the regime started bargaining the civilians to leave the blockaded districts and the rebels to lay down their arms and enter into conciliation agreements similar to other areas, which led to what was called by the regime “national conciliation”.
The military campaign, which started three months ago from al-Mallah area north to Aleppo, succeeded in cutting off Castello Road, the only link between Aleppo city and countryside, and imposing a complete blockade on the city.
Such a blockade would aggravate the sufferings of 400 thousand civilians living under very difficult circumstances including the shortage of fundamentals of life, such as water and electricity supply as well as foodstuffs. For three months before the blockade was completed, the city had not received any reliefs, because at that period, the regime allied militias had been lurking near the road and targeting any vehicles traveling through it. What also contributed to people’s sufferings is the lack of jobs, because the Russian war planes razed what had been considered the first industrial zone in the whole Middle East to the ground.
In addition, the healthcare situation deteriorated because the warplanes and helicopters of the Syrian regime and Russia destroyed all the hospitals in the besieged city. Moreover, the civilians-crowded areas were directly targeted with all kinds of weapons, including barrel-bombs, cluster bombs, vacuum missiles, and heavy artillery, which killed 900 civilians in July alone. This was accompanied by very weak civil defence services because of targeting their teams and destroying most of their equipment.