Peak Oil is You
Donate Bitcoins ;-) or Paypal :-)
Page added on December 15, 2016
Bombing resumes as Aleppo cease-fire falls apart
A cease-fire deal between rebels and the Syrian government in the city of Aleppo effectively collapsed on Wednesday, with fighter jets resuming deadly air raids over the opposition’s densely crowded enclave in the east of the city.
The attacks threatened to scuttle plans to evacuate rebels and tens thousands of civilians out of harm’s way, in what would seal the opposition’s surrender of the city.
The evacuation was supposed to begin at dawn, but shelling resumed in the morning hours and buses meant to be used in the pullout of rebels and civilians returned to their depots. Activists and fighters trapped in the opposition’s last sliver of territory in Aleppo said pro-government forces had struck their district with dozens of rockets since midmorning.
They said aircraft resumed bombing shortly after noon.
“They began to strike as if there’s no such thing as a ‘cease-fire’ or ‘civilian evacuation,'” media activist Mahmoud Raslan said. “They’ve announced they are going to kill us all.”
It was not clear whether the planes were Syrian or Russian. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group reported at least six people had been killed.
A legal adviser to the rebels accused Iran of foiling the Russia- and Turkey-brokered deal by imposing new conditions on the rebels. Along with Russia, Iran backs President Bashar Assad’s government and has committed advisers and elite Revolutionary Guard forces to the government’s war. Turkey backs the rebels fighting to topple Assad.
Osama Abo Zaid, the adviser, said Iran was imposing new conditions for the truce, demanding that the remains of Iranians killed in Aleppo be returned and that Iranian hostages held in rebel-controlled Idlib province be released. He said the conditions were “exclusively sectarian and crippling.”
The Syrian government, meanwhile, withdrew its green-colored buses from the evacuation point at the edge of the city of Aleppo’s opposition enclave. The Lebanese al-Manar TV, the media arm of the Lebanese militant Shiite group Hezbollah fighting alongside Assad’s forces, broadcast footage of the buses leaving the evacuation point empty and said government forces had resumed fighting with rebels in the city.
Mohammed Abu Jaafar, the head of forensics in eastern Aleppo, said eastern Aleppo residents felt “duped.”
“People have left their shelters …. to be ready for the evacuation. I can’t describe it,” Abu Jaafar said. “Since the morning, they started to target the areas where people have gathered … these people were walking to the crossings designated for exit.”
Activists in eastern Aleppo blamed the violence on pro-government forces, saying they shot first. Raslan said he was reporting for a Turkish agency when a rocket crashed nearby at about 10:15 a.m. He shared an audio recording of the explosion with the Associated Press. He was unharmed.
The Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement that the rebels “resumed the hostilities” at dawn, trying to break through Syrian government positions to the northwest.
Turkey’s foreign minister, Mevlut Cavusoglu, accused the Syrian government and its allies of trying to scuttle the deal. “We see now that the regime and other groups are trying to obstruct this (deal),” he said in remarks quoted by the state-run Anadolu Agency. “This includes Russia, Iran, forces supported by Iran, and the regime.”
The surrender of Aleppo’s remaining opposition-run neighborhoods to government control would be a turning point in Syria’s civil war.
The last-minute deal was mediated by Ankara and Moscow as the rebel enclave rapidly dissolved and ceded more and more territory in the face of the brutal advance by Syrian forces, backed by Russia and assisted by Shiite militias from Lebanon, Iraq, and Afghanistan.
Late on Tuesday, the UN envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, called for immediate access to the former rebel enclave to confirm the end of military operations and to oversee the safe departure of tens of thousands of civilians and opposition fighters. De Mistura was at the Security Council, where an emergency meeting for Aleppo was held.
Earlier Wednesday, the pan-Arab al-Mayadeen TV broadcast footage of the government buses idling at the agreed-on evacuation point. The TV said the buses were prepared to move 5,000 fighters and their families to Atareb, an opposition-held town in the northwestern Aleppo countryside.
Brita Haj Hassan, a Syrian opposition official living in exile, said from Luxemburg that there were 800 sick and wounded people requiring immediate medical evacuation from eastern Aleppo. He said the UN and others had informed the opposition the evacuation had been delayed until Thursday but there was no comment from the Syrian government, the United Nations, or aid groups on the ground.
The dramatic developments surrounding Aleppo — which would restore the remainder of what was once Syria’s largest city to Assad’s forces after months of heavy fighting and a crippling siege — followed reports of mass killings by government forces closing in on the final few blocks still held by the rebels.
#Aleppo map right now pic.twitter.com/fBlZZTrxNI
— Syria Today (@todayinsyria) December 14, 2016
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told the emergency meeting late Tuesday that he had received “credible reports” of civilians killed by pro-government forces as they swept into the last rebel areas in Aleppo.
Bashar al-Ja’afari, Syria’s UN ambassador, denied any mass killings or revenge attacks but added it was Syria’s “constitutional right” to go after “terrorists,” a reference to all opposition fighters.
“Aleppo has been liberated from terrorists and those who toyed with terrorism,” he said. “Aleppo has returned to the nation.”
10 Comments on "Bombing resumes as Aleppo cease-fire falls apart"
Plantagenet on Thu, 15th Dec 2016 11:26 am
Obama’s policy of arming and funding the Syrian rebels has now completely collapsed. No doubt the next US policy will be to provide aid to Syria to rebuild all the cities destroyed in the war against the US-backed rebels.
dave thompson on Thu, 15th Dec 2016 12:38 pm
Dropping bombs on cities populated with people, what could possibly go wrong?
claes on Thu, 15th Dec 2016 1:10 pm
Plant, there is no way people can live together if they have different opinions about what the divine superior power wants people to do.
You can make an armistice, you can make any agrement, but it won’t last until the next crisis.
It is stupid to think that christianity and Islam can live together with out confrontations.
It is also stupid to think that the two variants (sunni/shia) of islam could live together.
My wish is that all the mono teistic people of the world would confront and kill each others, while the rest of the world could live in peace.
mono teism is the basic evil of the world
Anonymous on Thu, 15th Dec 2016 1:13 pm
Plantard, go find some crayons and some paper, and draw some pretty pictures. Should keep you occupied for a good long while. And remember, don’t put the crayons in your mouth. Bad, ok?
joe on Thu, 15th Dec 2016 2:36 pm
It seems Aleppo has fallen to the middle easts only secular dictator, many of the jihadis who had a brain decided to become
Syrian citizens again and got drafted straight away. The rest will go to Idlib and join Al Qaeda (jabhat fateh al sham). Mad Dog loves shooting al qeada apparently, however it remains to be seen if Trump is serious about killing Sunni Cultists (aka Wahabbis). Iran has resisted Saudi terrorism for decades both when they fought off Saddam Husseins invasion of Iran and then in the modern times as Saddams friends grew beards and rebrand as ISIS. Sadly the MSM says I wrong, but the fact is that in these resource wars of keeping the Shia down, we must remember the Sunni regimes are masters of oil feilds on lands that are Shia majority, even if Shiites are only 10% of Islam, they are legitimate owners of most of Islams remaining oil. Syria is about stopping Iran having a market access to the west. The US failure in Iraq and now Syria ENSURES that Iran will supply competitive energy to Europe via Iraq and Syria. If Trump is smart he will back a revolution in Saudi Arabia and install a new regime there. Yemen will come back to haunt the evil Wahabbi Saudis.
claes on Thu, 15th Dec 2016 3:15 pm
Joe, do you see this conflict as the interepretation of muhammads words which has set sunnies aganst shia muslims ?
Or do you believe- like the most of the westeners do- that it is a war between arab tribes. If things go bad for the arabs they have very much reason to blame them selves.
The best thing about Trump is that he asks states to take of them selves. We in the western world shouldn’t care too much about looser states/people
joe on Thu, 15th Dec 2016 3:37 pm
Claes, I see it as it was laid out by Sykes-Pichot, somthing that Russia has done all it can to preserve in the face of 30 years of US support of jihadis. This is a very old plan first hatched by Germans. Put simply its using the people from an area to the fighting for you. It worked a treat in Afghanistan, it totally failed in Yugoslavia, thus requiring Clinton to bomb Serbia into the stone age (Al Qaeda has a very nice base in modern Kosovo), its failing in Iraq and its totally failed in Syria.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/museums/11022199/Germanys-Grand-WW1-Jihad-Experiment.html
You see Syria is like Lebanaon, with large Shia and Christian populations, if the ‘rebels’ of Syria had won or if they ever come to power, its curtains for minorities in this zone. Minorities there are litterally fighting to exist, but the New York Times backed by Saudi money wont tell you that. Allawites are a minority in the context of the broader map. Take out the pink dots in Iraq and much of Syria now.
https://thesinosaudiblog.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/mid-east-religion.jpg
The oil map of the middle east
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/images/maps/mapMEoil.jpg
The Saudis want to control everything and they are doing it by religious propaganda and facism and they are totally appeased and out of control, so much so, Obama suppressed the facts that Saudis backed the 9-11 attackers and nothing is done. Now Turkey is becoming a religious dictatorship and if it turns out like Saudi Arabia then ww3 is certain, and the only way to stop it is regime change in Saudi Arabia and settlement with
Israel.
Easy, yeah?
Hubert on Thu, 15th Dec 2016 4:24 pm
McCain was right, this War will last 100 Years.
makati1 on Thu, 15th Dec 2016 7:58 pm
Old news. New news:
“Celebrating the Liberation of Aleppo, Western Media Paints a Grim Picture without Mentioning that East Aleppo has Been Occupied by Al Qaeda For More than Four Years”
““Fake News” on Aleppo Liberation, Western Media Lies and Fabrications. The Words “Terrorists” or “Al Qaeda” are Not Mentioned
Video: Remaining Militants Withdraw from Aleppo After Failed Night Attack
“Aleppo Liberated: Washington Post Finally Admits “Rebels” Invaded Syria – It was not an Uprising”
“Celebrations have Started in Aleppo: Freed From the US-Supported Terrorist Scourge”
The U$ is losing the war with Russia in Syria.
Theedrich on Thu, 15th Dec 2016 11:22 pm
Sob. The WH spox deplores civilian deaths. If the U.S. massacres vast numbers of civilians, that’s OK; but if such deaths happen collaterally while Syria, Russia and Iran are fighting Hillary’s “freedom fighters,” that’s “evil” and due to “sick minds.” The mass WW II deaths of helpless civilians in Dresden, Hamburg, Köln, etc., not to mention Tokyo and, of course, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, are air-brushed from public consciousness. But if the actions of the Empire’s opponents, fighting fierce opposition, cause collateral damage resulting in a small fraction of such destruction, the MSM’s propaganda mills grind on 24/7, demanding U.S. intervention and the importation into the U.S. of all Mohammedans on the losing side.
By some kind of divine intervention, the warmongering hellcat, Hillary, lost the presidential election, so that we are at least temporarily spared from another one of her wars — one which could this time perchance terminate civilization altogether.
I do not often agree with Mak, but this time he is correct in all the details he refers to. The U.S. generated the war in Syria (in part using “false-flag” gas attacks) and is responsible for the entire inferno there, from start to finish. (Strange, by the way, that we hear so little about similar civilian slaughters by the U.S.-backed Saudis in Yemen.) Maybe we will be lucky and Assad/Russia/Iran will be able to wipe out the Yankee-backed
mercenaries“rebels” for good.