NICOSIA \u2014 The Syrian Army has been working on encircling the nation\u2019s largest city.<\/p>\n
Western diplomats said the Army, backed by Hizbullah and other Iranian proxies, was moving steadily into Aleppo. They said forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar Assad were advancing into Aleppo from three directions and reached the Old City quarter.<\/p>\n
Free Syrian Army fighters carry a weapon in Sheikh Najjar in Aleppo on March 20.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Army advance was progressing slowly, partly to avoid casualties as well as spare the destruction of the entire city,\u201d a diplomat said.<\/p>\n
The diplomats said the rebels, many of them sponsored by Saudi Arabia, were completely on the defensive. They said the rebels were also being hampered by attacks from Al Qaida\u2019s Islamic State of Iraq and Levant, believed to be working with the Assad regime.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Air Force bombarded areas in the industrial city of Sheikh Najar neighborhood,\u201d the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on March 27. \u201cISIS blew up the house of a leading figure in an Islamic battalion in the perimeter of the Surrin town near the city of Jarables.\u201d<\/p>\n
As a result, the regime was believed to be in control over nearly 80 percent of Aleppo. The diplomats said the regime succeeded in mobilizing thousands of Sunnis from the Aleppo area for militias sponsored by the ruling Baath Party.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe entire campaign is meant to soften up the city for a final assault,\u00a0probably in the spring,\u201d another diplomat said.<\/p>\n
The Assad regime has pounded rebel-held neighborhoods with so-called\u00a0barrel bombs, dropped from Russian-origin Mi-17 helicopters. The barrel\u00a0bombs, oil drums with explosives and shrapnel, were meant to expel civilians\u00a0from rebel strongholds.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe air campaign has also displaced large parts of the civilian\u00a0population from opposition-held Aleppo,\u201d the U.S.-based Human Rights Watch\u00a0said. \u201cThe heaviest concentration of the 340 distinct damage sites\u00a0identified in Aleppo city were in the neighborhoods of Al Marjet, Jouret\u00a0Awwad, Al Myassar, Helwaniye\/Tariq Al Bab, Salheen, Al Sakhour, Al\u00a0Heidariyya, Dahret Awwad and Masaken Hanano.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
NICOSIA \u2014 The Syrian Army has been working on encircling the nation\u2019s largest city. Western diplomats said the Army, backed by Hizbullah and other Iranian proxies, was moving steadily into Aleppo. They said forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar Assad were advancing into Aleppo from three directions and reached the Old City quarter. Free Syrian …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8420,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[440,340,349,1424,163],"class_list":["post-8417","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","","category-news-and-analysis","tag-allepo","tag-bashar-al-assad","tag-middle-east-2","tag-syria","tag-ticker"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8417","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8417"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8417\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8419,"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8417\/revisions\/8419"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8420"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8417"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8417"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8417"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}