After gains in northern Syria, Assad predicts total victory
DAMASCUS, Syria — Syrian President Bashar Assad congratulated his forces Monday for recent gains in northwestern Syria that led to his troops consolidating control over Aleppo province, pledging to press ahead with a military campaign to achieve complete victory “sooner or later.”
Assad, who rarely appears in public, said in a televised address that the onetime economic hub of Aleppo, the provincial capital, will “return stronger than it was before.”
“This liberation does not mean the end of the war, and does not mean the end of the schemes nor the end of terrorism or the surrender of enemies,” Assad said, seated behind an empty wooden desk and wearing glasses. “But it means that we rubbed their noses in the dirt as a prelude for complete victory and ahead of their defeat, sooner or later.”
The address came amid an ongoing military advance in northwestern Syria that has sparked a humanitarian catastrophe which the U.N.’s humanitarian chief Mark Lowcock warned “has reached a horrifying level.” In a statement, he said the U.N. believes 900,000 people have been displaced since Dec. 1, most of them women and children.
In the past few weeks, government troops backed by Russian air power have captured more than 580 square miles in the northwest, consolidating their hold over Aleppo province after capturing more than 30 villages and hamlets in the western countryside in a single day Sunday.