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Syria crisis: Civilians in east Aleppo 'face starvation within days'

Amman, Jordan: Syrian government and allied forces have seized large parts of an important district in rebel-held east Aleppo, as civilians feared they would soon run out of food.

The 275,000 civilians in the city's east will face starvation within days unless convoys of lorries filled with aid are granted entry, the United Nations warned this week.

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Ten killed in latest Aleppo strikes

Videos uploaded to social media purport to show aftermath of air strikes on rebel-held east Aleppo on Thursday. The Britain-based war monitor, The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said at least ten people were killed and dozens others injured.

"There is no food left from the World Food Program or the UN in east Aleppo," UN humanitarian adviser Jan Egeland warned on Thursday. "Plan A that hundreds of standby aid trucks deliver medicine and food to east Aleppo must succeed. There is no Plan B, because that means starvation," he said on Twitter.

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On the same day, the White Helmets, a US-backed search-and-rescue group active in east Aleppo, said residents were 10 days away from starvation.

Four days later, not a single shipment of aid has been allowed to enter east Aleppo, an area Mr Egeland described as "in freefall".

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Aid groups and the international community have criticised the Russian and Syrian governments for their failure to approve the east Aleppo UN aid plan that rebel groups have already agreed.

But for Damascus, there is little urgency to cede even the slightest bit of control. After two months of all-out assault on east Aleppo, Syrian government forces are seeing the tide turn.

On Saturday, Syrian army troops claimed control of the Hanano neighbourhood. It was a tactical victory as well as a symbolic win: Hanano, a key entry point into the eastern part of the city, was the first neighbourhood to fall to rebels in 2012. After four years, government forces now have a vital toehold on the city's eastern quarter.

Further south, on the outskirts of Damascus,  a truce was reached between government and opposition parties in the previously rebel-held village of al-Tal, after more than two years of siege.

The deal will allow exhausted opposition fighters to leave al-Tal and take their personal weapons with them on the condition that they surrender all heavy weapons. It will also open the area up for humanitarian aid.

Local activists cautioned on social media that as with the Darayya truce in August, the al-Tal deal is designed to pave the way for an ethnic rebalancing: opposition-supporting Sunnis out, Damascus-backing communities in.

Meanwhile Qatar's foreign minister has said his country will continue to arm Syrian rebels even if US President-elect Donald Trump ends US backing for the multinational effort.

But Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani said the wealthy Gulf state would not "go solo" and supply shoulder-fired missiles to the rebels.

Some Western officials worry that Gulf states, dismayed at effective Russian air support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, could supply such "Manpad" anti-aircraft weapons. Washington fears they could be seized by jihadist groups and used against Western airliners.

Qatar is a top backer of rebels fighting Dr Assad, working alongside Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Western nations in a military aid program overseen by the CIA that provides selected groups with arms and training.

"This support is going to continue, we are not going to stop it. It doesn't mean that if Aleppo falls we will give up on the demands of the Syrian people," Sheikh Mohammed said.

"We want to have the US with us, for sure, they have been our historic ally," he said. "But if they want to change their minds, are we going to change our position? For us, in Qatar at least, we are not going to change our position. Our position is based on principles, values and on our assessment of the situation there."

Sheikh Mohammed suggested that Mr Trump's views about Syria might evolve once in office when he received intelligence reports about the "reality" on the ground.

Sheikh Mohammed said the reality was that Dr Assad and violence by his forces were the core security risk, and that Islamic State was an outgrowth of the civil war. More hardline groups would emerge if the war does not come to a just end.

"If we are not going to address the cause of all this ... without addressing the issue of al-Assad, we will have another extremist group, it will be more extreme and more brutal," he said, noting that Islamic State had evolved from al-Qaeda.

Telegraph, London, Reuters

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