BEIRUT — With international diplomacy in tatters and the U.S. focused on its election, the Syrian government and its Russian allies are seizing the moment to wage an all-out campaign to recapture Aleppo, unleashing the most destructive bombing of the past five years and pushing into the center of the Old City.
Desperate residents describe horrific scenes in Syria’s largest city and onetime commercial center, with hospitals and underground shelters hit by indiscriminate airstrikes that the U.N. said may amount to a war crime.
Debris covers streets lined with bombed-out buildings, trapping people in their neighborhoods and hindering rescue workers. On Tuesday, activists reported at least 11 people killed in airstrikes on two districts in the rebel-held part of Aleppo.
The battle for Aleppo is unlikely to be an easy one for government forces because the isolated rebels say they are determined to “fight until the end” to defend their neighborhoods. Insurgents outside the city could also attack government troops to try to reduce pressure on comrades trapped inside.
If government forces and their allies capture the rebel-held eastern neighborhoods, it would be a turning point in the 5½-year-old civil war that has killed more than 250,000 people and displaced half of Syria’s population.
Over the course of the conflict, the government has slowly regained control of major cities. Its aim appears to be securing what some analysts call “useful Syria” — a portion containing the four largest cities of Aleppo, Damascus, Homs and Hama, along with its Mediterranean coast.
Aleppo is the last of the major cities still being contested, and it could take government forces between six months and a year to capture it, unless they aim to “annihilate” the politically significant city, a Western diplomat told The Associated Press. The envoy, who is familiar with the cease-fire talks that have faltered, spoke on condition of anonymity because of his government’s regulations.
President Bashar Assad “doesn’t want a negotiation,” the diplomat said, adding that “the Russians wouldn’t or couldn’t stop him” from attacking Aleppo.
Assad’s government controls the capital of Damascus, except for two small neighborhoods. It also controls all of Homs and Hama, the third- and fourth-largest cities.
Since the one-week cease-fire brokered by Russia and the U.S. ended Sept. 19, Aleppo has been under intense Russian and Syrian airstrikes, killing more than 200 civilians, knocking down entire buildings, disrupting water supplies and targeting Civil Defense centers.
Attempts to revive the cease-fire during the U.N. General Assembly failed, and U.S. Ambassador Samantha Powers harshly criticized Russia, saying Moscow was practicing “barbarism.”
Residents are stunned by the intensity of the bombing on areas that have seen a sharp increase in food prices due to the siege, which tightened earlier this month.
Ibrahim Alhaj, a member of the Syrian Civil Defense, said his parents’ house was shelled, and he was able to save them only because he lives nearby.
Assad “listens to no one — not the United Nations, not anyone,” a desperate and exhausted Alhaj said. “Is there no humanity in this world?”
Clinics have been flooded with casualties in the past week. Many had to be treated on white-tiled floors covered with blood. Online amateur video showed people running to the site of the airstrikes, screaming the names of their relatives as they searched for them.
Brita Hassan Haj, head of the Aleppo council in the area, said, “Bunker-buster bombs are penetrating underground shelters, leaving no one safe,” he said. “The main roads are closed, the civil defense can’t operate, and people are dying. … It is like judgment day.”