Syrian troops capture northern parts of rebel-held Aleppo

Syrian government forces seized full control of northeast Aleppo on Monday, shaving the shrinking island of rebel-held territory by a third and sending thousands of civilians into panicked flight.

On Monday, they moved into the Sakhour district, putting much of the northern part of the city’s besieged rebel-held areas under government control.

According to Human Rights Watch, the government was dropping leaflets on eastern Aleppo telling residents rebels had failed and they would be “annihilated” if they did not leave.

Russia’s Defense Ministry said Syrian government forces in recent days captured 12 neighborhoods and over 3,000 buildings.

Syria’s Al Watan daily, which is close to the government, said the next stage of the operation would be “to divide the remaining [rebel-held] area into. districts that will be easily controlled and to capture them successively”.

“The rebels have lost at least 30 percent of the territory they once controlled in Aleppo”, Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman said.

At the time, they vowed to take the whole city.A military official confirmed to the Syrian Arab News Agency that they had “fully recaptured” the district from terrorists trying to overthrow Syrian president Bashar al-Assad.

Rebel defenses swiftly collapsed as government forces pushed into the Hanano district on Saturday, the first time they had pushed this far into eastern Aleppo since 2012.

“These civilians have no access to basic food materials and medicines in light of internal displacement from eastern to western neighborhoods in the besieged part of the city”, the White Helmets said in a statement on Monday.

Seven-year-old Bana Alabed, who has gathered thousands of Twitter followers with her tweets from Aleppo, said on Sunday that her home in the east of the city had been bombed.

Opposition activist Omar Abu Laila, who is from Deir el-Zour and now lives in Europe, said the airstrike struck a vegetable market on Sunday, killing 17 and wounding more than 25.

Matthew Rycroft said Tuesday that there is a plan in place to get food and medicine in and allow the sick and wounded to get out, but the U.N.is waiting for Syria’s green light to go ahead.

United Nations envoy Jan Egeland last week said that rebels had agreed to the plan, but the consent of Syria and its Russian ally was still pending.

The rapid advances in the last two days, after weeks of intense Russian and Syrian air strikes, have raised fears among the insurgents that the northern part of east Aleppo could be cut off from the southern part.

As rebels surrendered, almost 10,000 civilians fled to government- or Kurdish-controlled safe zones; others made their way to the south, where rebels retain control.

At least 225 civilians, including 27 children, have been killed since the government’s latest assault on east Aleppo began on November 15.

The ultraconservative Ahrar al-Sham group announced Tuesday it had appointed Ali al-Omar, also known as Abu Ammar al-Omar, as its new leader.

More than 508 civilians have been killed and 1,871 others injured since mid-November in regime attacks on Aleppo – once the second-largest city in Syria.

The conflict broke out in 2011 with the brutal repression of anti-government protests, and has since evolved into a complex war involving different factions and foreign powers.

Syria’s former economic capital and industrial hub lies at a strategic commercial crossroads near the border with Turkey.

With military backing from the Russian air force, Iran, and Lebanon’s Hezbollah, Assad has gradually closed in on eastern Aleppo this year.