Baladi News – Aleppo (Abdulaziz Al-Khalifa)
The regime forces and their allied Kurdish People’s Protection Units continued their attacks on the eastern neighborhoods of Aleppo under Russian aerial cover. The Kurdish militia took control over the neighborhoods of Bani Zaid, al-Ashrafiya, and al-Sakan al-Shababi on Wednesday, whereas the regime and its allies kept committing their massacres against the people of Aleppo.
The regime helicopters dropped some bags of biscuits, butter and baba diapers in addition to leaflets that included instructions for those who want to leave the besieged eastern areas of the city towards the regime-held areas. The Russian defense minister, Sergey Kuzhugetovich Shoygu, stated on Thursday that the Russian army and the Syrian regime forces would start a “large-scale humanitarian operation” in Aleppo to assist residents who became “hostages with the [terrorists].”
In statements broadcasted by the Russian T.V., Shoygu said that Russia and the Syrian regime would open three passages for citizens, meanwhile a fourth one would be opened for armed men in northern Aleppo near Castello road according to Reuters.
However, a local source in Aleppo emphasized that anything about opening three passages by the regime and Russia is fake. The source clarified that such news is part of their propaganda to show that they care for civilians, which is refuted by their bombardments on civilians using all types of weapons despite the fact that the city is blockaded.
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.
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. 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 1500 civilians in the last two months. This was accompanied by very weak civil defence services because of targeting their teams and destroying most of their equipment.
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.