The Fall of Rebel Held East Aleppo [Update]

This is breaking news, more info to follow …

Twitter Fares Shehabi, Aleppo

In 3 days, the Syrian army liberated 20 sq km of
E Aleppo (purple)! Al-Qaeda controlled areas in
(blue). These areas will be liberated next.

It’s not the Syrian Army but Hezbollah and Iraqi Shia militia under leadership of Iran’s Al Quds military. The Syrian Army units follow with the “embedded” press corps.

○ How much longer can east Aleppo hold out? | Al Jazeera – Qatar |

Aleppo business leaders targeted in Syria violence | Reuters – Oct. 2013 |

Top Syrian businessman Fares Shehabi says he lives in constant fear of being kidnapped by rebels fighting loyalist forces for control of his home city Aleppo. But he clings on in the city, saying it is his duty to try to keep its economy running.

“I was attacked three or four times and they tried to kidnap me many times,” said Shehabi, 40, scion of a wealthy merchant family with interests ranging from pharmaceuticals and food to real estate and banking.

In one attack, assailants riddled one of his factories with gunfire and tried to plant explosives in it, he said. He now moves around with bodyguards, sometimes in disguise.

Nineteen months into the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad, Syria’s biggest city and main industrial centre has been crippled by the fighting. Located among the olive groves and pistachio trees of northwest Syria, it has a population of about 3 million in peacetime.

In addition to widespread damage to factories and shops and an exodus of refugees from neighbourhoods caught in the fighting, Aleppo’s community of businessmen and industrialists has been hit hard. Some of the wealthiest are linked to Assad’s government through partnerships with officials.

Many have fled with their families to places such as Lebanon, Dubai and Egypt. Others have stayed, but say they are targets of violence, extortion and kidnapping attempts by rebel groups and government-linked gangs known as shabiha.

The businessmen developed Aleppo into Syria’s economic engine, the focus of its export trade and the seat of its pharmaceutical, textile and plastics industries. So the damage to the merchant class bodes ill for a recovery of the Syrian economy when the fighting eventually ends.

EU extends sanctions on Syria, warns of more | JPost – Aug. 2011 |

Commentary from new UK prime minister May …

○ Theresa May calls for international pressure on Putin over Syria | The Guardian |

Further updates below the fold …

In major blow, Syria rebels lose all northeast Aleppo | Gulf News |

The loss of the city’s east would be a potentially devastating blow for Syria’s rebels, who have seen their territory fall steadily under government control since Russia began an intervention to bolster President Bashar Al Assad in September 2015.

On Monday, government forces seized the Sakhour, Haydariya and Shaikh Khodr districts, while Kurdish fighters took the Shaikh Fares neighbourhood from rebels, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor said.

…
On Sunday night, nearly 10,000 civilians had fled the east, with around 6,000 moving to the Kurdish-held Sheikh Maqsoud neighbourhood and 4,000 to government-held west Aleppo.

State television showed footage of families disembarking from the green coaches regularly used to transport civilians and surrendering rebels from territory retaken by the government.

Kurdish officials published a video they said showed civilians crossing a field and arriving in Shaikh Maqsud, where local forces helped people lift baggage over a makeshift berm as they arrived.

…
People in southern neighbourhoods were donating blankets and other items to the new arrivals, who travelled on foot, exhausted, cold and hungry.

“The situation in eastern Aleppo is very fluid and things are evolving quickly,” said Scott Craig, spokesman of the United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR.

“We are deeply concerned about the impact of the fighting on the civilian population in Aleppo,” he told AFP.

Yasser Yousuf, an official from the Noor Al Deen Al Zinki rebel group [beheaded a 12 year-old], said the government’s advance was the result of support from Russia and Iran, both staunch allies of Damascus.

“For all the past years, we have resisted with the primitive means we have had, but today we’re resisting Iran and Russia,” he said.

U.S.-Backed Syrian Rebel Commander Boasts of Fighting With AQ Affiliate | IPT blog |

The United States continues to arm Nuruddin az-Zinki as it fights dictator Bashar al-Assad’s forces. But in an interview posted online last week, az-Zinki founder Tawfiq Shihab Al Deen acknowledged teaming up “with Al Nusra (an al-Qaida affiliate in Syria), which is a group that proved themselves to be forceful fighters.”

“Our groups, Nuruddin az-Zinki, along with Al Nusra, are the only groups continuously fighting against the regime in the al-Malah area in Aleppo,” Shihab al-Deen told Abdallah al-Muhasayni, a radical Saudi preacher [arrived in Syria in 2013 bestowing religious blessing upon suicide bombers] said in an interview posted on YouTube June 21.

Al-Muhasayni interviewed jihadi commanders in Syria during the month of Ramadan. He is known to be the conduit between the Jihadi rebel groups in Syria and their benefactors in the Gulf.

The United States has armed Nuruddin az-Zinki, which has posted many videos showing their fighters using U.S. TOW missiles.
It is not clear why the United States continues to support Nuruddin az-Zinki despite its alliance with an al-Qaida affiliate.

Muhasayni’s interview with Shihab al-Deen could indicate that this alliance between Nuruddin az-Zinki and Al Nusra extends beyond the battlefield. Muhasayni is considered the spiritual father of al-Qaida in Syria.

The U.S. suspended non-lethal aid to Syrian rebels late in 2014, after jihadists seized warehouses storing supplies. But support for Nuruddin az-Zinki continued, the McClatchy news service reported.