In recent weeks, the Syrian military, backed by Russian air power and Iran-affiliated militias, has swiftly retaken most of eastern Aleppo, the last major urban stronghold of rebel forces in Syria. Tens of thousands of besieged civilians are struggling to survive and escape the fighting, amid talk of a rebel retreat. One of the oldest continuously inhabited cities on earth, the city of the Silk Road and the Great Mosque, of muwashshah and kibbeh with quince, of the White Helmets and Omran Daqneesh, is poised to fall to Bashar al-Assad and his benefactors in Moscow and Tehran, after a savage four-year stalemate. Syria’s president, who has overseen a war that has left hundreds of thousands of his compatriots dead, will inherit a city robbed of its human potential and reduced to rubble

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2016/12/aleppo-syria-putin-assad/509945/


Aleppo: Reports of executions as Syrian army closes in

Failed attempts at peaceThe bloodshed comes as the international community has failed to find a political solution to the crisis in Aleppo, which has become the epicenter of Syria's brutal five-year war.Russia has used its veto power several times to shoot down resolutions in the UN Security Council, and an agreement has hinged on Russia and its fiercest critic, the US, finding a middle ground.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/12/12/middleeast/aleppo-syria-government-gains/index.html

 

Last edited by tennyson (12/13/2016 10:22 am)