The Guardian highlights Aleppo’s critical situation, calling it “a decisive turning point in the conflict.”
“No food, no medical aid, no humanitarian assistance, has been able to reach” the approximately 300,000 people trapped in Aleppo’s opposition-held territory for several weeks now, because of the intensity of the Assad regime’s onslaught.
The British newspaper describes Aleppo as “one of the key symbols of resistance to the Assad regime since 2012” and warns that if Assad’s “forces” advance into the city, then “it would be the beginning of a new, humanitarian catastrophe of unprecedented proportions in Syria.”
“Aleppo has been so massively shelled and bombed these past weeks that it has become an inferno for those who struggle among the ruins,” The Guardian states, explaining that the city is in dire need of food stocks and has become almost completely empty of running hospitals and doctors.
The British newspaper explains that the Assad regime and its Russian allies are continuing with their tactic of siege and starvation, “but they are now doing it on a much larger scale, and openly,” calling their recent announcement of “humanitarian corridors” as a cynical ruse.
Furthermore, the Assad regime has “demonstrated time and again how little it cares for international humanitarian law,” the paper writes, explaining that “its machine of repression makes no distinction whatsoever between armed combatants and civilians.”
The paper warns that “the fate of Aleppo’s inhabitants may to a large degree depend on how global public opinion can now be mobilized.”
The paper concludes by stating: “Saving Aleppo from utter destruction and more massacres is not only a humanitarian imperative, it is also the only way the thin chances of a settlement in Syria will ever be salvaged.”
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