Assad forces tell opposition: Leave or die

President Bashar Assad’s forces say it is offering fighters in besieged eastern Aleppo an opportunity to leave the city with their lives. 
Army spokesman Brig. Gen. Samir Suleiman said those who choose to stay will face “inevitable death.”
He spoke to The Associated Press in Aleppo, where government forces and allied militias are seeking to collapse an opposition pocket on the city’s eastern side.
“We will continue fighting until we restore stability and security to all neighborhoods” of Aleppo, Suleiman said.
He said the Syrian army has retaken more than 50 percent of neighborhoods in eastern Aleppo.
He also said that efforts to retake Aleppo’s historic quarters known as Old Aleppo will be the most difficult, adding that the army will use infantry and special forces.

Anti-Russia protest
Turkish students protested on Sunday outside the Russian Consulate in Istanbul over Moscow’s military support for Assad’s regime in Syria.
“Russia murderer, go away from Syria!” chanted several dozen students who called for an end to the siege on Syria’s second city, Aleppo.
The protest came as Moscow and Damascus denied claims by Ankara that the regime was responsible for an air strike that killed four Turkish soldiers last month. A similar demonstration against Russia’s backing of Assad took place on Friday, outside Istanbul University in which demonstrators called for “imperialist Russia to leave Syria.”
Russia is the chief ally of the Syrian president in the conflict that has claimed more than 300,000 lives since 2011.

Fighters not to 
leave Aleppo
Fighters in Aleppo have told the United States they will not leave their besieged enclave in the city after Moscow called for talks with Washington over their withdrawal, signalling they will fight on even as their top commander was wounded.
Speaking to Reuters from Turkey, senior opposition official Zakaria Malahifji said groups fighting in Aleppo told US officials on Saturday they would not leave the city. The US officials had asked the fighters “do you want to leave, (or) do you want to be steadfast,” Malahifji said.
“Our response to the Americans was as follows: ‘we cannot leave our city, our homes, to the mercenary militias that the regime has mobilized in Aleppo’,” said Malahifji, the head of the political office of an Aleppo opposition group.
With more than 30,000 people uprooted by the latest fighting, residents who fled eastern Aleppo for government-held areas early in the war began returning to the Hanano district recently captured from the fighters to inspect their homes.
Under relentless attack, the fighters may have no choice but to negotiate a withdrawal from their shrinking, besieged enclave in eastern Aleppo, where tens of thousands of civilians are thought to be sheltering.
The Western and regional states that have backed the rebellion appear unwilling or unable to do anything to prevent a major defeat for the opposition fighting to topple Assad.
Russia, whose air force has helped the government close in on eastern Aleppo this year, said on Saturday it was ready for talks with the United States over a full withdrawal of fighters from Aleppo.
The fighters said the Russians had retreated from proposals agreed at talks with opposition groups in Turkey that would have resulted in fighters leaving the city, a cease-fire and humanitarian aid deliveries.
The Syrian army, backed on the ground by an array of militias including Shiite groups from Iraq, Iran and Lebanon, has vowed to crush the fighters in Aleppo.
“The expectation is weeks,” the military source said, referring to the timeframe for taking back the whole city.
“The Syrian Arab Army will continue to implement its missions until the elimination of the terrorists and the recovery of control over all the eastern districts,” he said.
Pro-Damascus sources have previously said the army aimed to take back all of Aleppo by the time US President-elect Donald Trump takes office on Jan. 20. The reason was to mitigate the risk of a shift in US policy on Syria, though Trump has indicated he could end US support for the fighters.
The United Nations estimates that close to 30,000 people have been displaced by the latest fighting, 18,000 of them leaving to government-held areas, a further 8,500 going to the Kurdish-controlled neighborhood of Sheikh Maqsoud and the rest moving within opposition-held areas.
UN envoy Staffan de Mistura has said more than 100,000 people may still be in the opposition-held area. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based group that reports on the war, said it could be as many as 200,000 people.
Food and fuel supplies are critically low in eastern Aleppo, where hospitals have been repeatedly bombed out of operation.
The opposition, including foreign-backed groups, say they have been abandoned to their fate in a war against better armed enemies including the Russian air force and Lebanon’s highly trained Hezbollah.

Raids kill dozens
Suspected Russian air strikes killed at least 46 people in opposition-held parts of Syria on Sunday, a monitor said, as government forces advanced in fierce clashes with rebels in east Aleppo.
In Idlib province alone, in northwest Syria, at least 26 civilians were killed in suspected Russian strikes on the town of Kafr Nabel, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor said.
Russia’s military announced last month it was resuming its air strikes on the northwestern Idlib province and central Homs province in support of the government’s efforts to suppress a years-long uprising against its national authority. Kafranbel is not on any front lines of the raging war.
People visit homes
A Reuters journalist said buses leaving from western Aleppo were bringing a steady stream of people to inspect homes they had not seen in years. Russian military trucks also delivered aid to the captured eastern districts of eastern Aleppo. 
In another blow to the fighters, the head of a new opposition alliance was seriously wounded on Saturday, opposition officials said. Abu Abdelrahman Nour will be replaced as head of the “Aleppo army” he was appointed to lead last week.
The regime and its allies have opened numerous fronts against the opposition-held east in what fighters see as an effort to deplete their ammunition and men. Malahifji said the fighters could remain steadfast for “an excellent period” of time.

Source: Arab News