Girl, 12, ‘killed by Turkish border guard’ as 15,000 flee Aleppo fight
Potentially decisive battle looms after Assad’s troops backed by Russia encircle Syria’s rebel second city
A GIRL aged 12 fleeing airstrikes on the Syrian city of Aleppo was reportedly shot dead by Turkish authorities as she and tens of thousands of other refugees queued at the border trying to reach safety.
An intense Russian assault on one of the country’s most populous cities has sent as many as 20,000 people to the border crossing in the past few days, as President Bashar al-Assad’s troops close in on rebel-held territory.
Government soldiers and allied militia cut the rebels’ vital supply line from Aleppo to Turkey on Wednesday in what may come to be seen as a decisive moment in the nearly six-year war.
The north Aleppo countryside is now totally encircled by forces loyal to Mr Assad, two and a half years after the area fell out of government control in the wake of a popular uprising.
Photographs posted on social media suggested that the girl, named as Ghalia Zakour, may have been shot by border guards as she tried to flee with her family through an unofficial crossing.
The Turkish authorities said yesterday that they were investigating the reports. On the Syrian side of the border, men were seen carrying luggage on top of their heads, and the elderly and those unable to walk were brought in wheelchairs. Some women sat on the side of the road holding babies as they waited to be allowed into Turkey.
The United Nations said yesterday that at least 15,000 people had fled the fighting, and that tens of thousands more were waiting at the border.
Video footage showed thousands of people, mostly women, children and the elderly, massing at the Bab al-Salam frontier crossing.
Aleppo would be the biggest strategic prize in years for the Assad government in a conflict that has killed at least 250,000 people and driven 11 million more from their homes.
The severing of the rebels’ Aleppo supply line was made possible by intense Russian air strikes.
Opposition fighters in the north of the province told The Daily Telegraph that their lines had buckled under the force of “hundreds” of bombing raids.
Moscow intervened militarily in Syria’s war at the end of September. Its air strikes first shored up Mr Assad’s north- western heartlands and then ground down rebel offensives on three fronts across the country, tipping the balance of power in favour of the regime.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a British-based monitoring group, said yesterday that regime troops had retaken a town at the door- step of Daraa, the contested city between Damascus and the Jordanian border which held some of the first protests against Mr Assad in early 2011.
Syria’s official news agency says the offensive on Atman, north of Daraa, scattered rebel forces – which it labels terrorists. The Syrian Observatory said troops had advanced under the cover of heavy artillery bombardment and air power. Nato’s secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, said that Russian airstrikes against opposition forces were “undermining efforts to find a political solution to the conflict”.
Early-stage Syrian peace talks broke up acrimoniously in Geneva earlier this week after regime troops launched their Aleppo offensive.
The United Nations has officially postponed those talks to February 25 and is now engaged in a desperate scramble to convince opposition representatives to stay with the process.