Last night jihadists chose to abandon the area north of and around the Citadel, SAA troops linked up with the garrison stationed at the Citadel very early this morning and established full control of the area. With this the oldest part of the city is safe again, including the 8th century Umayyad mosque which was damaged and taken by militants 3 years ago.
As for today, the SAA captured Marjeh after taking control of Bab al-Nayrab and Sheikh Lutfi in Eastern Aleppo, the current situation map as of 16:10 local time looks like this:
Securing those historical monuments is fantastic news. I know, I should care more about the people caught in the crossfire of this horrific war, but when I saw the front lines were moving closer to the historical center I was really worried about bombs falling all over this cultural heritage.
Seems even in war the two (twenty) sides could agree that a street war around the citadel would just destroy their own heritage, and it was better to surrender it and be able to show it to their children than see it destroyed in a bitter battle for every street block.
By the end of today the size of the encirclement has continued to decline. Because the contact line has gotten shorter militants are able to more densely group up defensive positions, but the SAA has also freed up a very large number of troops which are now storming the pocket. This has led to a further collapse of the front line.
From the south Sheik Saeed was recaptured, one look at the map above and you could most probably guess they will be moving onto that protrusion between Sheik Saeed and Bab al-Nayrab. Jihadi's managed to fight off an advance into the Sukkari district, one of their rare successes in the last few days, they are fighting much harder because they no longer have anywhere to run off to.
In the north the attack evolved from two directions, from the north the SAA and Republican Guard moved through the district of Bastan Al Qasr to the Bader mosque. And from the direction of the Citadel, which has today led to the liberation of Al-Dzhallum, Qalat al-Sharif and Al-Siffahia.
Of course the situation is changing constantly and who knows what it will look like in the morning.
As for the rest of the county ISIS has started a large-scale assault on the area around Palmyra, taking a few villages and destroying a few tanks.
Dunno how much its been reported in the MSM but the Syrian army unilaterally stopped offensive operations in what is left of the jihadist pocket in Aleppo to allow the civilian population to leave the area.
In case anyone is interested here is a livestream of the road out of the pocket
On December 10 2016 22:55 Ayaz2810 wrote: This is the first I'm hearing of civilians being allowed out. That's great though. I guess i need to turn on the news.
Here is a TV report on the whole process. Yeah, its a report about militants trying to escape Aleppo by blending in with the civilians, but the columns of people show that clearly many civilians are leaving the rebel part of Aleppo. The Russian MOD says 50,000 civilians have left whats left of the rebel areas in the last two days. With 1,217 militant fighters surrendering.
It's not entirely a bad thing for militants to flee as well. In a way it's a problem because they can continue operations elsewhere, that much is true. But if the alternative is that they are backed into a corner where death is certain they will do worse than that.
On December 11 2016 01:11 LegalLord wrote: It's not entirely a bad thing for militants to flee as well. In a way it's a problem because they can continue operations elsewhere, that much is true. But if the alternative is that they are backed into a corner where death is certain they will do worse than that.
The ones that shave their beards and dress up as women to get out of there aren't going to continue the fight elsewhere. They are going to Germany.
Continuing the fight elsewhere and going to Germany don't necessarily have to be mutually exclusive, mind you.
Nevertheless, the problem of dispersed militants is better solved by police than by seeing what happens when desperate militants fight with their backs to the wall and no place to run in a city full of civilians.
On December 10 2016 22:55 Ayaz2810 wrote: This is the first I'm hearing of civilians being allowed out. That's great though. I guess i need to turn on the news.
for close to two months now there were live feeds set up on corridors opened to aleppians by the russians, for those who wanted to leave. there was not much leaving thou because, allegedly, the rebels were shooting the ones who were trying to leave.
So John Kerry (among others) basically admits that Aleppo is going to be taken at this point and asks for mercy to be given to the rebel fighters, e.g. promises that they won't be executed.
World diplomats have pleaded for safe passage for Aleppo’s civilians and for respect to be shown to Syria’s disintegrating rebel forces as Bashar al-Assad’s army moves ever closer to victory in the devastated city.
A meeting of US, European and Arab foreign ministers as well as Syrian opposition leaders in Paris on Saturday appeared resigned to what the UN called the “last steps” in the fall of Aleppo, seen as the biggest defeat for anti-Assad forces since the conflict broke out in 2011.
Russia claimed tens of thousands of people had left the city in the past three days during a “humanitarian pause”, but on Saturday the east of the city was under bombardment. The UK foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, and the US secretary of state, John Kerry, were among the powers in Paris calling for civilians to be evacuated and condemning Assad’s “indiscriminate” bombing as a crime against humanity.
Kerry urged Russia to show “a little grace” as he was due to meet his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, in Geneva, hoping for a deal to enable people to leave Aleppo. The UN has expressed concern about reports that hundreds of men have gone missing after reaching government-held territory.
Russia and Assad “have a moment” where they could show mercy and offer guarantees that rebels would not be executed, Kerry said. “Fighters … don’t trust that if they agreed to leave to try to save Aleppo, that it will save Aleppo and they will be unharmed and free to move where they are not immediately attacked.”
Kerry was speaking a day after admitting to US embassy staff in Paris that he was “tired” of trying to negotiate with the Russians. “I know people are tired of these meetings. I’m tired of these meetings,” Kerry said. “People are sort of: ‘Oh, another meeting. OK. This one will end the same way the other one did.’ I get it, folks. I’m not born yesterday.
“But what am I supposed to do? Go home and have a nice weekend in Massachusetts while people are dying? Sit there in Washington and do nothing?”
With prospects appearing increasingly grim for the rebels, Kerry insisted that an Assad victory in Aleppo would not end the war if underlying issues remained unresolved.
He called the talks “the hardest kind of diplomacy” and, together with the French foreign minister, Jean-Marc Ayrault, urged a return to negotiations between Assad and his opponents.
Johnson added his voice to the calls for a humanitarian end to the siege and said: “Although the deterioration of the situation in Aleppo will be a setback for the Syrian opposition, it will not change the fundamentals of the conflict. There can be no military solution in Syria. We must keep pushing for a return to a political process with the credibility necessary for all parties to commit to an end to all the fighting.
“We agreed our first priority must be the protection of civilians and ensuring access for humanitarian aid. It’s essential that the regime and its backers provide the United Nations that access with immediate effect.”
Russia’s defence spokesman, Major General Igor Konashenkov, said Syrian troops had suspended their offensive to allow for an evacuation, but the activist-run Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said heavy clashes were under way. On Friday pro-regime forces claimed to occupy 85% of Aleppo where, said the UN special envoy Staffan de Mistura, around 100,000 people remained, squeezed into an “ever-shrinking” pocket without access to food or medicine.
Elsewhere in Syria, it was reported that Islamic State militants had re-entered Palmyra in the east of the country after advancing to its outskirts for the first time since losing the city earlier this year.
The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said militants had earlier taken strategic heights overlooking Palmyra and captured the northern part of the historic ancient city and major silos and mountains around it.
Meanwhile, the US defence secretary announced that 200 more military personnel would be sent to Syria to join the 300 already involved in the fight against Islamic State in the caliphate’s Syrian capital, Raqqa.
Speaking at talks on Middle East security in Bahrain, Ash Carter said the deployment would include advisers and bomb disposal experts. But the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a US-backed Arab-Kurdish alliance, said the US soldiers would be “on the frontlines” of the push for Raqqa and claimed that one had died.
“US forces were on the frontlines of the first phase of this offensive, and one member of these forces was killed. Their participation will be even more effective alongside our forces in the second phase,” said an SDF spokesman, Talal Sello.
Carter also made one of his most direct attacks yet on his Middle Eastern partners for not lending more military muscle to the fight against Isis while complaining about American efforts. He suggested US politicians had been angered by disingenuous criticism.
Carter said: “I would ask you to imagine what US military and defence leaders think when they have to listen to complaints sometimes that we should do more, when it’s plain to see that all too often, the ones complaining aren’t doing enough themselves.”
He said it was not unreasonable for Washington to expect regional powers to do more to help fight extremism, “particularly in the political and economic aspects of the campaign”.
He noted how many Sunni-led Gulf countries were concerned about the spread of Iranian influence: “If countries in the region are worried about Iran’s destabilising activities – a concern the United States shares – they need to get in the game,” Carter said. “That means getting serious about starting to partner more with each other.”
Iran is releasing long sentenced prisoners if they volunteer to fight for Assad in Syria
Iranian authorities are pardoning some of their most notorious criminals from its prisons as long as they agree to volunteer to fight in Syria, a local media outlet has reported.
Al-Hissar News, a local human right news website focused on Iranian prisoners, revealed how Tehran coaxes Iranian and Afghan prisoners with promises of amnesty if they returned intact from the war.
According to the source, prisons authority confirmed that the volunteered prisoners would be considered “martyrs”, in addition to benefits and perks to be rewarded to their families if they are killed while fighting on the frontlines.
Thousands of Iranian soldiers and militia fighters have been killed in Syria’s civil war, laying bare the scale of Iran’s intervention to preserve Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s grip on power.
Tehran has also been covertly recruiting hundreds of Iraqis, Pakistanis, and Afghan to fight alongside the Syrian government forces.
A prisoner at Rajaai Shar Karj prison, who refused to be identified for security reasons, said prisoners are restricted from disclosing their intention to volunteer to fight in Syria or clarifying the grounds of their pardons, according to news report.
“My mother staunchly rejected the idea of volunteering and told to let Khamenei and Rafsanjani send their children, not the helpless prisoners and Afghans,” the prisoner was quoted as saying.
On December 11 2016 19:37 Disregard wrote: ISIS has taken over most of Palmyra again just now. Their news agency AMAQ claims the defence within the city has collapsed.
BBC says it's more so "conflict in progress" than "fallen" really.
Control of the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra has been going back and forth between government forces and so-called Islamic State, reports say.
Activists say IS regained control of the city despite being forced from the centre by Russian air strikes.
They entered the city on Saturday after launching an offensive earlier in the week.
The Syrian army has also sent reinforcements to the city, reportedly diverting troops from Aleppo.
IS held the Unesco World Heritage site of Palmyra from May 2015 until they were forced out in March this year.
The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Sunday morning that "intense" bombing from Russian planes had forced IS to withdraw to the orchards on the city's outskirts.
But it later reported that the militants had again fought their way into the town, forcing government forces to retreat to the south.
Moscow said the Syrian army had repelled IS with air support from its forces. The Russian defence ministry said it had carried out 64 strikes during the operation, and claimed to have killed more than 300 militants.
Reports said IS militants had gone on the attack with suicide car bombs and artillery.
Palmyra is seen as strategic for IS because it lies close to oil fields.
IS destroyed a number of monuments and beheaded the archaeological director during its 10-month occupation of the site and the adjacent city of Tadmur.
Two 2,000-year-old temples, an arch and funerary towers were left in ruins.
The jihadist group, which has also demolished several pre-Islamic sites in neighbouring Iraq, believes that such structures are idolatrous.
The latest battle in Palmyra happened as the Syrian army closed in on the remaining rebel-held area of the city of Aleppo.
Rebel forces said on Saturday that they had halted the advance of government forces in the pockets they still control in Aleppo.
One rebel commander said a reason for the slowed government advance could be the redeployment of troops to Palmyra.
However, the Syrian government has been continuously advancing on the rebel areas, backed by Russian air support, and now reportedly controls 93% of the city.
On Saturday, US Secretary of State John Kerry called on the Syrian government and the Russian military to "show a little grace" as they mopped up the remaining rebel-held areas of Aleppo.
He was speaking after a meeting in Paris of governments that back the Syrian opposition.
US and Russian officials are due to meet in Geneva to discuss the possible evacuation of civilians and rebel fighters from Aleppo. But analysts say an agreement looks unlikely.