Aleppo battle: Calls to spare lives as fighting nears end

The UN and Red Cross have appealed for civilians to be protected, as fighting in Syria’s Aleppo nears its end.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said people had “literally nowhere safe to run”.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon voiced alarm “over reports of atrocities against a large number of civilians”.

Thousands of people are trapped in just a handful of rebel-held districts, which are facing intense bombardment as government troops advance.

Some residents have sent out messages saying they are crowded into abandoned apartments and rainy streets, unable to take shelter from the bombing, the New York Times reports.

The volunteer rescue group known as the White Helmets and three other trapped aid groups said people feared for their lives, and have pleaded for safe passage out for civilians.

“The women may be taken to camps, the men ‘disappeared’ and anyone who is known to have supported civilians will face detention or execution,” they said in a statement.

Syrian state TV showed footage of people in western Aleppo celebrating, amid reports the army was close to victory.

Mr Ban’s spokesman, Stephane Dujarric, said “the secretary-general is alarmed over reports of atrocities against a large number of civilians, including women and children, in recent hours in Aleppo”.

“While stressing that the United Nations is not able to independently verify these reports,” he said, the secretary-general had “instructed his special envoy for Syria to follow up urgently with the parties concerned”.

Meanwhile, the ICRC said a deepening humanitarian crisis could only be averted if basic rules of war and humanity were respected, warning “this may be the last chance to save lives”.

UN humanitarian adviser on Syria, Jan Egeland, earlier tweeted that the governments of Syria and Russia were “accountable for any and all atrocities that the victorious militias in Aleppo are now committing”.

Homage to Allepo

Assad’s Fragmenting millitary

A US official with knowledge of efforts to secure safe passage for people trapped in the city told the BBC that some “50,000 people remain under bombardment” in Aleppo, with Syria’s Russian allies rejecting the idea of pauses in the bombing to allow people to leave or allow injured children to be evacuated.

So far there have been no public comments on the issue by Syria or Russia, although the Russian Centre for Reconciliation of the Opposing Sides says it has helped 7,796 civilians leave rebel-held areas in the past 24 hours.

For much of the past four years, the city has been divided roughly in two, with the government controlling the western half and rebels the east.

Syrian troops finally broke the deadlock with the help of Iranian-backed militias and Russian air strikes, reinstating a siege on the east in early September and launching an all-out assault weeks later.

Rebels have now lost more than 90% of the territory they once held.

Russia says more than 100,000 civilians have been displaced by the fighting and that 2,200 rebel fighters have surrendered.

The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group says that at least 415 civilians and 364 rebel fighters have been killed in rebel-held areas since 15 November and another 130 civilians have died in rebel rocket and mortar attacks on the government-controlled west.

Analysts say the fall of Aleppo would be a big blow to the opposition, as it would leave the government in control of Syria’s four largest cities.