Hundreds flee as troops attack Aleppo
Children looking at the sky area of Aleppo on Wednesday. ALEPPO: Hundreds of civilians have fled the city’s rebel-held east after government forces, determined to retake all of Syria's second city here, seized its largest opposition-controlled district.
The capture on Saturday of Masaken Hanano — which had been the biggest rebel-held district — was a major breakthrough in a 13-day regime offensive.
The fighting moved to two neighbouring districts, Haidariya and Sakhur, yesterday, with regime aircraft pounding rebel positions and heavy fighting between the opposition and forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad.
Masaken Hanano was the first district the rebels took in the summer of 2012 in a move that divided the city into a rebel-held east and a regime-controlled west.
Around 250,000 civilians trapped
in a rebel-held besieged under government siege for months in the east had faced serious food and fuel shortages.
More than 500 civilians fled rebelheld districts for the governmentcontrolled west overnight, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said yesterday.
“It is the first exodus of this kind from east Aleppo since 2012,” Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman said.
Yasser al-Youssef, from the rebel group Nureddin al-Zinki, said opposition fighters were consolidating their positions in Sakhur.
Sakhur lies on a stretch of just 1.5km between west Aleppo and Masaken Hanano, now both controlled by the regime.
If the regime did manage to take control of the district, east Aleppo would be split in two from north to south, dealing a further blow to the armed opposition. AFP