Humanitarian Aid Cut Off to Thousands in Aleppo, Syria

Turkey’s IHH Humanitarian Relief Foundation reported that more than 50,000 people had massed near the border.

Tens of thousands of Syrians have sought refuge in Turkey, while those who have already made the crossing waited and anxious about the fate of their families on the other side of the border.

A Syrian man is among the thousands who have fled the fighting in and around the northern city of Aleppo.

Cavusoglu said the border was open, but at the Oncupinar crossing near the Turkish city of Kilis, which has been largely shut for almost a year, refugees were being shepherded into camps on the Syrian side.

The Turkish army has confiscated 700 parrots and 294 budgerigars on the border with Syria, it said on Friday, as its tighter security measures ensnare what was once a thriving trade in domesticated birds.

While simultaneously, Russian fighter jets were hammering down on rebel positions in the northern province of Aleppo allowing the Syrian army backed by Iranian militias to push farther in northern countryside near the border line with Turkey, a military source told CCTV that the army has now taken the towns of Ma’er and Ratyan.

Turkey hosts the largest number of refugees – 2.5 million.

Tens of thousands of Syrians fled an intensifying Russian assault around Aleppo yesterday, and aid workers said they feared the city which once held two million people could soon fall under a full government siege.

OCHA spokeswoman Linda Tom said another 10,000 people were thought to have been displaced to the Kurdish town of Afrin, elsewhere in northern Aleppo. Since 2012 it has been divided into rebel- and government-held areas.

Syria’s largest city and once its commercial center, Aleppo was a crossroads of civilization for millennia.

Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem, speaking in a televised news conference, said he was citing his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov, who had said “a ceasefire would not be possible before the borders with Turkey and Jordan are controlled, and before agreement on lists of terrorist organisations, it is hard to achieve that”.

“Like it or not, our battlefield achievements indicate that we are headed toward the end of the crisis”, he told a press conference in Damascus.

He called on rebel fighters to “come to their senses” and lay down their weapons.

The government offensive is targeting the Aleppo province, which was once a rebel stronghold, providing easy access to neighbouring Turkey, a key opposition backer.

Top diplomats from countries trying to resolve the conflict are set to meet again next week after United Nations envoy Staffan de Mistura suspended the floundering Geneva negotiations until February 25.

“Let no one think they can attack Syria or violate its sovereignty because I assure you any aggressor will return to their country in a wooden coffin, whether they be Saudis or Turks”, he warned.

“We have serious grounds to suspect Turkey is in intensive preparations for an armed invasion of the territory of a sovereign state – the Syrian Arab Republic”, Russia’s defence ministry said in a statement.

Many refugees had made the journey based on Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s open-door policy for those escaping conflict.

Iran, another military ally of Syria, ridiculed Saudi Arabia.

Iran’s semi-official Tasnim news agency said Revolutionary Guard Corps Brig. Some European countries have said they will take fewer asylum seekers than before.

“It’s the worst we have seen in this war”, said Mustafa Mahmoud, the director of a cross-border aid group. Gen. Mohsen Ghajarian and six Iranian volunteers had been killed in fighting in Aleppo province. In recent months, only limited numbers of Syrians have been allowed to cross.

The main insurgent groups in the city are the ultraconservative Ahrar al-Sham group; the Nour el-Din Zengi; the Tawhid Brigade; and the Nusra Front, al-Qaida’s branch in Syria.

Syrian state media and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights say that government forces and allied Shiite militiamen overran two more towns north of Aleppo in the past two days.