What Ceasefire? Assad and Russia Are Gearing Up to Seize Syria's Second-Largest City

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WAR & CONFLICT

What Ceasefire? Assad and Russia Are Gearing Up to Seize Syria's Second-Largest City

By VICE News

April 29, 2016 | 2:32 pm
More than 100 people have reportedly been killed over the past week in Aleppo, Syria's second-largest city, and it appears that forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad plan to soon mount an offensive there, a move that would shatter what's left of the country's crumbling ceasefire.

"Wherever you are, you hear explosions of mortars, shelling and planes flying over," said Valter Gros, the head of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Aleppo, in a statement on Thursday. "There is no neighborhood of the city that hasn't been hit. People are living on the edge. Everyone here fears for their lives and nobody knows what is coming next."

The ICRC said the city is on the "brink of humanitarian disaster," and warned that "escalating violence is putting millions, many of whom are displaced and living close to frontlines, at grave risk and without a chance of getting much-needed aid."

The escalation in fighting came as a pro-government Syrian newspaper said that the country's military was preparing try to take control of the city of 2 million, which has been divided between pro- and anti-regime forces since 2012.

"Now is the time to launch the battle for the complete liberation of Aleppo," Syria's al-Watan paper said in an editorial on Thursday. "It's no secret that the Syrian army has prepared this decisive battle with its allies. It will not take long to begin, nor to finish."

Related: Aleppo Hospital Is Bombed, as UN Urges US and Russia to Save Syria Peace Talks

UN Special Syria Envoy Staffan de Mistura said on Thursday that the Syrian ceasefire, brokered by the US and Russia, was "still alive, but barely." He said fighters in some areas are still abiding by truce, but other places, like Aleppo, have seen a dramatic increase in casualties.

"In the last 48 hours, we have had an average of one Syrian killed every 25 minutes. One Syrian wounded every 13 minutes," he said in a Thursday night press conference.

De Mistura's comments came as the latest round of peace talks he is brokering between the warring parties ended inconclusively in Geneva.

(Map by the Institute for the Study of War)

Analysts at the Institute for the Study of War, a non-partisan US think tank, warned in a report released on Thursday that Assad and his allies in Moscow and Tehran have "set the stage for an imminent offensive to complete the encirclement of Aleppo."

"The current confluence of strategic intent, political opportunity, and tactical maneuvers indicate that the regime and its allies will act within the coming weeks to encircle and besiege Aleppo City," the report said.

Beyond the uptick in airstrikes, the Institute for the Study of War noted several other signs that a campaign in Aleppo is looming, including the fact that the Syrian government has concentrated armored vehicles and troops in the area, and that Russia has redeployed artillery to locations outside the city.

Related: Scores of Civilians Killed In Aleppo as Syria Violence Intensifies

"For Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, the return of the largest urban center in the country to government control would bolster his claim to legitimate rule over 'all corners' of Syria and buttress his position at the table during any future negotiations with the international community," the report said.

Meanwhile, the Syrian army announced a temporary truce on Friday for areas in the capital Damascus and its suburbs, and the northeastern region of Latakia province, but not for Aleppo.

What Ceasefire? Assad and Russia Are Gearing Up to Seize Syria's Second-Largest City | VICE News

 

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Last Night, My Friend, Aleppo’s Most Qualified Remaining Pediatrician, Was Killed
04/28/2016 03:22 pm ET | Updated 1 day ago

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  The Syria CampaignA global advocacy group standing in solidarity with non-violent Syrians and their struggle for a peaceful and dignified future.

Dear friends,

I am Dr. Hatem, the director of the Children’s Hospital in Aleppo.

Last night, 27 staff and patients were killed in an airstrike on Al Quds Hospital nearby. My friend Dr Muhammad Waseem Maaz (pictured below), the city’s most qualified pediatrician, was killed in the attack.

He used to work at our Children’s Hospital during the day and then he’d go to Al Quds Hospital to attend to emergencies overnight.

Dr. Maaz and I used to spend six hours a day together. He was friendly, kind and he used to joke a lot with the whole staff. He was the loveliest doctor in our hospital.

I’m in Turkey now, and he was supposed to visit his family here after I returned to Aleppo. He hadn’t seen them in four months.

Dr. Maaz stayed in Aleppo, the most dangerous city in the world, because of his devotion to his patients. Hospitals are often targeted by government and Russian air forces.

Days before Dr. Maaz’s life was taken, an airstrike hit only 200 meters away from our hospital. When the bombing intensifies, the medical staff run down to the ground floor of the hospital carrying the babies’ incubators in order to protect them.

Like so many others, Dr. Maaz was killed for saving lives. Today we remember Dr. Maaz’s humanity and his bravery. Please share his story so others may know what medics in Aleppo and across Syria are facing.

The situation today is critical — Aleppo may soon come under siege. We need the world to be watching.

Thank you for keeping us in your thoughts,

Dr. Hatem



Follow The Syria Campaign on Twitter: www.twitter.com/TheSyriaCmpgn

Last Night, My Friend, Aleppo's Most Qualified Remaining Pediatrician, Was Killed

 

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Syria Hospital Airstrike: Are The Rules Of War Breaking Down?

April 28, 20166:09 PM ET

JASON BEAUBIEN

The al-Quds Hospital in Aleppo is one of seven health facilities that have been hit in Syria in 2016.

Beha el Halebi/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
The al-Quds hospital in Aleppo, Syria, is the latest health care facility to get blown apart.

The 34-bed hospital was tucked into the lower floors of a five-story building in the Sukkari neighborhood of Aleppo. Sandbags blocked the windows and fortified the entrance. Concrete apartment buildings pressed on either side of it. Late Wednesday night, witnesses say, a low-flying fighter jet unleashed a missile that smashed directly into the hospital.


THE TWO-WAY
Hospital Destroyed In Deadly Aleppo Airstrike, Doctors Without Borders Says
The airstrike killed at least 27 people, including Dr. Mohammed Wassim Moaz, a pediatrician who continued to work in Aleppo even as the Syrian civil war raged around him.

The hospital's location is well-known in Aleppo. And that's why some observers are charging that the attack is part of a recent and disturbing trend.

"Over the last several years direct, targeted attacks on health care institutions that are clearly civilian facilities have escalated greatly," says Dr. Michael Van Rooyen, an emergency physician and the director of Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, "and Syria's been the most notable and notorious example."

Van Rooyen has just come out with a book called The World's Emergency Room: The Growing Threat to Doctors, Nurses, and Humanitarian Workers.

He says it's a clear violation of the Geneva Conventions to launch airstrikes on medical facilities. These attacks have made providing medical care in conflict zones incredibly dangerous, especially in Syria, he adds.

"Increasingly [clinics] are forced literally underground," he says. "The only way these surgeons can work is in basements of hospitals, not normal facilities, bunkers practically, which is really restrictive and really difficult."

Sam Taylor, spokesman for Doctors Without Borders in Amman, Jordan, says al-Quds was a well-established hospital with an emergency room and an eight-bed pediatric ward.

"What this [attack] means in very practical terms is that one of the main facilities for women to give birth and children to receive treatment has now been destroyed," he says.

MSF, as the group is also known, runs six medical facilities inside the country and helps support 150 others with supplies and salaries for local staff. Al-Quds was one of them. Taylor says of the clinics and hospitals his charity is working with in Syria, seven have been hit since January. "This year alone in 2016," he stressed, "seven structures have been hit."

And it's not just in Syria that field hospitals and medical aid workers are being attacked.

Over the past six months, four MSF facilities in Yemen were hit by airstrikes.

In October of last year an American gunship mistook an MSF hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, for a Taliban compound and pounded it for nearly half an hour. The airstrike killed 42 people.

The year before, medical facilities were attacked in war zones around the world including in Ukraine, Colombia, South Sudan, the Central African Republic and Iraq, to name a few.

Van Rooyen says 20 years ago humanitarian groups were viewed as impartial and enjoyed a certain level of protection in most of the places they worked. He says that's no longer the case — a dangerous shift not only for health care workers but for the local community.

Conditions are so dangerous in some places that health care workers can't work at all. This, he says, can have even a greater impact than the loss of a single hospital.

"Populations no longer have access to public health," Van Rooyen says. "They no longer have access to childhood vaccinations, and they can't get their kids treated for pneumonia and diarrhea. It's the deprivation of basic health resources that disproportionately kill children and block women from having safe pregnancies. Elders can't get medications."

While no one's taken responsibility for the airstrike, the only two groups with aircraft in the area are the Syrian regime and the Russians.

Syria Hospital Airstrike: Are The Rules Of War Breaking Down?

 

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