Militants refusing to leave Aleppo to be eliminated

Military activities in the Aleppo region were halted only to allow civilians leave the city, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said at a press conference on the sidelines of the OSCE Ministerial Council meeting in Hamburg on December 9.

The state news agency SANA said Wednesday that Syrian forces established control over two districts north of the Aleppo Citadel in the heart of the city – the Aghiour and Bab al-Hadid neighborhoods – after rebels abandoned positions and retreated further south.

“It took us five hours to get here”, she said.

Another round of discussions will be held in Geneva on Saturday.

The US welcomed the “indication that something positive could happen but we’re going to have to wait and see whether those statements are reflected on the ground”.

“We condemn the attack at that military field hospital, we completely condemn it, it seems to be a targeting of a field hospitals”, Egeland said, answering a question about a lack of response from the global organizations, including from the United Nations.

“We will not let Russian Federation string along the Security Council while waiting for a compromise that never seems to come”, Sison said.

Capt. Abdel-Salam Abdel-Razek of the rebel Nour el-Din el-Zinki faction says the future of the city of Aleppo is to be negotiated during this humanitarian pause, which the rebels want the United Nations to monitor. However, he provided no details about how the aid might get in or where it would go, and past agreements have fallen through before any aid could be delivered. “This may be my last call”.

Before the end of 2016 the Syrian army will assume full control of Aleppo ending rebel presence in the city that started since July 2012 when rebel first moved in on the city. Residents described streets littered with bodies as ambulances and rescue workers struggled to keep up.

CNN is not able independently to confirm this claim, but on Wednesday residents and activists inside the city told CNN that the rebels still held about a quarter of eastern Aleppo.

The tough rhetoric comes a day after Russian Federation and China blocked a draft resolution at the U.N. Security Council demanding a seven-day truce in Aleppo to evacuate the sick and wounded and to provide humanitarian aid workers time to get food and medicine into the city.

The Syrian government has dismissed a proposal for a cease-fire put forward by the rebels Wednesday.

“The Americans in particular are insisting on demanding a truce, because their terrorist agents are now in a hard situation”, Assad told Al-Watan.

When asked about the possibility of a truce in Aleppo, Assad said, “it’s practically non-existent, of course”.

And it calls for “the evacuation of civilians who wish to leave besieged east Aleppo to the northern Aleppo province countryside”, where rebels still hold pockets of territory.

The joint statement pointed the finger at both Moscow and Tehran for frustrating efforts to find a peaceful end to the brutal civil war.

On Thursday, opposition activists reported intensive bombing in the al-Sukkari and Kallaseh neighborhoods still under rebel control.

A military source confirmed to Reuters on Wednesday that the Syrian army had entered Aleppo’s Old City.

Almost two weeks into a crushing blitz, Syrian forces and their allies have taken control of almost all of what was once an opposition stronghold in eastern Aleppo, touching off a new wave of evacuations Friday and raising concerns about hundreds of men who have disappeared and are feared to have been seized by the government.

A Russian military spokesman, Lt. Gen. Sergey Rudskoi, said Friday that Syrian government forces now control 93% of eastern Aleppo.

The Kremlin said on Wednesday that a potential U.S. -Russia deal to allow Syrian rebels to leave Aleppo safely was still on the agenda. They have vetoed the delivery of basic medicine to people who will die without it.