BEIRUT – Syrian government forces poised for the final sweep to take the last rebel holdouts in eastern Aleppo on Tuesday as the international community and aid agencies appealed that the lives of thousands of civilians who have “nowhere safe to run” be spared and that those fighting to capture the rebel enclave refrain from atrocities.
The dramatic appeals came a day after the Syrian military announced it now holds 99 percent of the former rebel neighborhoods of Aleppo, signaling an impending end to the rebels’ four-year hold over parts of the city as the final hours of the battle play out.
Retaking Aleppo, which has been divided between rebel- and government-controlled zones since 2012, would be President Bashar Assad’s biggest victory yet in the country’s civil war. Aleppo has long been regarded as a major gateway between Turkey and Syria.
But a government win in Aleppo does not end the conflict – significant parts of Syria are still outside government control and huge swaths of the country are a devastated waste-land. More than a quarter of a million people have been killed.
The International Committee of the Red Cross in a statement on Tuesday urged all fighting in Aleppo to spare civilian lives. It said thousands of people with no part in the violence “have literally nowhere safe to run.”