http://www.arabnews.com/node/1018366/middle-east
ALEPPO/BEIRUT/GENEVA: Hundreds of elite Syrian troops moved into east Aleppo on Thursday, even as the opposition fighters have geared up to form a new military alliance to better organize the defense of parts of the city they control from a ferocious assault by the government and its allies, officials in two of the insurgent groups said on Thursday.
The offensive, backed by artillery, has spurred an exodus of tens of thousands of residents from the rebel-held east.
The relentless barrage has left Aleppo’s streets strewn with the bodies of men, women and children, many lying next to the suitcases they had packed to escape.
Steady artillery fire could again be heard pounding rebel areas early on Thursday, with heavy rainfall adding to the misery.
The assault has seen President Bashar Assad’s forces make significant gains in the last week.
After overrunning the city’s northeast, they were in control of 40 percent of the territory once held by opposition forces in Aleppo, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
“The regime is tightening the noose on the remaining section of east Aleppo under rebel control,” Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP.
He said hundreds of fighters from the elite Republican Guard and Fourth Division arrived in Aleppo on Thursday “in preparation for street battles” in the densely populated southeast.
“They are moving in on the ground, but they are afraid of ambushes because of the density of both residents and fighters,” he said.
The violence in Aleppo has sparked widespread outrage at the regime, but also at its steadfast supporter Moscow.
Humanitarian corridors
UN special envoy Staffan de Mistura ‘s humanitarian adviser Jan Egeland told reporters. He said those figures were likely to have risen on Thursday.
Syria and Russia have declined the UN’s request for a pause in the fighting to evacuate 400 sick and wounded in need of immediate treatment, but Russia wants to discuss the idea of setting up four humanitarian corridors, he said.
“A humanitarian corridor can work if all the armed actors respect it,” Egeland said.
The UN has food for 150,000 people ready in western Aleppo but it still cannot reach roughly 200,000 who remain in the enclave, where food stocks have run out and surgery is being done in basements without anaesthetic, he said.
The United Nations is scaling up its presence in western Aleppo to help with the aid effort but also to monitor the treatment of people fleeing the besieged zone.
“There are no more vulnerable people on earth probably than the civilian population in Aleppo,” said Egeland. “And they are extremely vulnerable for possible actions by the armed opposition groups as they try to leave and by all of the groups that will meet them as they leave.”
The top priority remains a pause in the fighting, as well as finding shelter for people as winter begins, he said.
Egeland renewed his call for the members of the jihadist group formerly known as the Nusra Front to leave the besieged zone, which he said would help save lives and strengthen the argument for a ceasefire.
Elsewhere in Syria, aid convoys reached the four besieged towns of Foua, Kufreya, Madaya and Zabadani this week, but overall aid convoys only reached 8 percent of the besieged population in November. The UN’s aid convoy plan for December has not yet been approved by the government, Egeland said.
New military alliance
Fighters in Aleppo have agreed to form a new military alliance to better organise the defence of parts of the city they control from a ferocious assault by the government and its allies, officials in two of the insurgent groups said on Thursday.
The Syrian government assault backed by allied militia has driven the rebels from more than a third of the territory they held in eastern Aleppo, threatening to crush the rebellion in its most important urban stronghold.
Rivalry among opposition rebel groups has been seen as one of their major flaws throughout the war.
The two officials, speaking from Turkey, said the new alliance would be called the “Aleppo Army” and led by the commander of the Jabha Shamiya rebel faction, one of the major groups fighting in northern Syria under the Free Syrian Army banner.
An official with a second rebel group confirmed that the Jabha Shamiya’s Abu Abdelrahman Nour had been selected as the leader. In an interview with Reuters last week, Nour urged greater support from foreign states that back the opposition.
A Jabha Shamiya official told Reuters the new alliance would help centralize decision-making.
The Jabha Shamiya group, known in English as the Levant Front, has received support from Turkey and other states that want Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad removed from power.
