‘WELCOME TO HELL’
ALEPPO’S INNOCENTS CAUGHT IN THE CROSSFIRE OF WAR
Aleppo has been besieged for months. But now Russian and Syrian jets are pouring death from the skies in preparation for what is expected to be a ground assault on the rebel-held Syrian city.
But it is not just the rebels who are hit — according to the UN, as many as 275,000 people remain in east Aleppo.
As usual, the grim task of pulling the dead — many children — from the rubble went to the award-winning volunteer civil defence group known as the White Helmets, themselves the target of attacks.
“Are we in the era of technology and civilization?” said a resident of eastern Aleppo, according to the Guardian newspaper. “Is this Russian civilization and democracy? The killing of children, women and elderly people?”
“I have not seen in my life such bombardment. It is very, very intense,” said Ibrahim Alhaj, a member of the Syrian Civil Defence.
A photograph widely circulating on social media showed the bodies of a woman and her two children who were killed in one of the airstrikes on Aleppo. The three were shown lying in bed, their bloodied bodies covered in dust and debris as a rescue worker crouched next to them. The woman held a bloodied infant; lying next to her was the body of a young boy, his blue shirt covered in blood.
The residents have been under siege for more than a month, cut off from fresh food, water, electricity, and fuel.
“We are living on the last of the aid, and the last of the vegetables that came from the countryside,” said Om Majed Kamran, a 58-yearold resident.
“There is no milk, no cheese, nothing,” she said. “None of us have cooking fuel ... so we make bonfires outside.”
THE WHITE HELMETS ARE COMPLETELY EXHAUSTED. ALEPPO IS BEING BURNED.
“This means welcome to hell,” Abdulkafi Al-Hamdo, a teacher who lives in rebel-held Aleppo, said as the bombing began. “We expect extermination.”
Three of the White Helmets’ four centres were nearly destroyed in airstrikes overnight Friday.
“The White Helmets are completely exhausted. Aleppo is being burned,” said Ammar al-Selmo, civil defence volunteer with the group.
Diplomatic efforts in New York have failed to salvage a Syrian ceasefire that lasted nearly a week, before giving way to a new level of violence. Residents and activists say the bombing, which began in earnest late Wednesday night, has been unprecedented, targeting residential areas, infrastructure and civil defence centres.
Reports said about 100 civilians had died.
A Syrian military official said on Friday that airstrikes and shelling in Aleppo might continue for an extended period and the operation will expand into a ground invasion of rebel-held districts.
The Nour el-Din el-Zinki insurgent group, which is powerful in Aleppo, said the government’s offensive shows that the government and its allies want to impose “a military solution” to Syria’s crisis.
Any hopes of another ceasefire were dimmed when Syrian President Bashar Assad said he did not trust anything the Americans said.
“American officials — they say something in the morning and they do the opposite in the evening,” he said. “You cannot take them at their word, to be frank. We don’t listen to their statements, we don’t care about it, we don’t believe it.”
Distrust of the American position has allowed Russian influence to swell in the region.
It was almost exactly a year ago that Russia entered the Syria conflict. Once on the defensive, Assad’s forces now have gained back territory from the rebels, while Russia has won use of an Iranian air field to launch attacks, bolstering its claim to influence in the Middle East.
“This has been a tremendous success for Russia across the board,” said David Schenker, the director of the Program on Arab Politics at the Washington Institute. “Not only in fighting terrorism, killing Russian jihadis, and re-establishing a role in Middle East, but sticking a finger in the eye of Washington.”