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Syria, Russia tell rebels to leave Aleppo or die
Government rejects cease-fire as way for fighters to “regroup.”
BEIRUT — Syrian government forces and allied militias captured Aleppo’s centrally located al-Shaar neighborhood from rebels Tuesday, securing nearly three quarters of the besieged enclave less than two weeks after launching a ground offensive, according to the Syrian military.
Meanwhile, the Syrian government and its ally Russia rejected a cease-fire for the war-torn city, keeping up the military offensive amid rebel retreats and massive displacement.
Syria and Russia on Tuesday also issued warnings to rebels in besieged eastern neighborhoods of Aleppo, with Moscow’s top diplomat saying the rebels will be wiped out unless they stop fighting and leave the city.
“Those who refuse to leave nicely will be destroyed,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told reporters in Moscow, speaking of the Syrian rebels. “There is no other way.”
Damascus said it rejects any cease-fire for Aleppo that does not include the departure of all rebels from the eastern part of the city and that it won’t allow the rebels to use a truce as a chance to “regroup.”
The rhetoric comes a day after Russia and China blocked a draft resolution at the U.N. Security Council demanding a seven-day truce in Aleppo to evacuate the sick and wounded and to provide humanitarian aid workers time to get food and medicine into the city. Russia is supporting the government’s offensive in Aleppo and has repeatedly blocked action in the Security Council over Syria.
In Damascus, the Foreign Ministry said in a statement carried on the SANA state news agency that the government will not allow rebels a chance to “regroup and repeat their crimes” in the divided city — a reference to rebel shelling of Aleppo’s western, government-held districts that has killed 81 civilians in the past three weeks, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
The government’s offensive to take eastern Aleppo killed 341 civilians over the same period and displaced tens of thousands over the past week, activist groups have said.
Rebels withdrew from al-Shaar under heavy bombardment by pro-government forces to the Marjeh and Maadi neighborhoods, local media activist Mahmoud Raslan said. Several gunmen were killed.
“Morale has hit rock bottom,” he said from inside the city’s remaining rebel-held enclave.
SANA said the government captured the neighborhood as well as the neighborhoods of alQatarji and Karm al-Dada.
A map provided by the Syria army showed a shrinking opposition enclave — a pointed leafshaped territory in the center, abutting already government-controlled Aleppo districts. The army media said the new gains bring the area controlled by the government in eastern Aleppo to 73 percent of its original size, which is estimated to be about 17 square miles.
Al-Shaar was home to at least four hospitals available to residents trapped by the government’s siege of the eastern part of the city. But those hospitals, along the rest of the neighborhood, were bombed by the government’s attacks and evacuated. Broad swaths of the city’s eastern quarters are in ruins.
Ibrahim al-Haj, a civil defense member, said he was in the neighborhood shortly before it fell to the government. “It is totally destroyed,” he said, adding that if he had stayed a minute longer he would have been captured.
Rebel defenses are collapsing under the weight of twin offensives by progovernment forces.
Rebels and pro-government forces fought streetto-street in the city’s southern Saif al-Dawleh and alZabadiyeh neighborhoods, according to footage provided by Syrian military media and audio provided by local teacher and media activist Abdelkafi Alhamdo.