Syrian forces enter Aleppo’s old city, poised for war’s biggest victory

The loss of Aleppo would be the biggest defeat yet for opposition forces in Syria’s five-year civil war. “The advance is going according to plan and is sometimes faster than expected”.

Kerry, asked by a journalist in Hamburg what it would take to bring peace to Aleppo, said only: “common sense”.

He said Russian and U.S. military experts would meet in Geneva on Saturday to discuss ways of bringing an end to the violence in Aleppo.

Meanwhile, Russia and China on Monday vetoed a UN Security Council resolution calling for a ceasefire in Aleppo to allow desperately needed aid into the war-ravaged zone.

On Friday, the top US commander in Afghanistan, Gen. John Nicholson, told reporters at the Pentagon that Russian Federation has lent legitimacy to the Taliban. “It is not us that walked away from diplomacy. It is Syria and Russian Federation”.

Despite past joint U.S. More than 30,000 of the estimated 275,000 residents of the besieged eastern enclave have fled to western Aleppo. “If there is even one person remaining, then it is my duty to stay with them”, he said.

President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman says the Kremlin regrets a “more than modest” reaction by the global community following the deadly attack on a Russian military hospital in the Syrian city of Aleppo the previous day. They had all been pardoned, it said.

Brig. Gen. Zeid al-Saleh, the head of the security committee in Aleppo city, was speaking to state TV Wednesday from newly captured areas in Aleppo.

Government officials had not directly addressed the rebel proposal by the evening.

However, in his first public comments since the Aleppo offensive began in mid-November, he also cautioned that retaking Aleppo did not in itself mean an end to the bloody conflict.

The Syrian Foreign Ministry said it would accept no truce at this point in Aleppo, should any outside parties try to negotiate one unless all the terrorist groups there depart.

“We do not want to support those who want to finish those militants at all costs; what we want is to avoid additional casualties and destruction”, he stated.

In Washington, State Department spokeswoman Elizabeth Trudeau said the US was focused on de-escalating the violence in Aleppo to allow aid into the city and enable people wishing to stay in their homes to do so.

“It is a significant landmark towards the end of the battle, but the war in Syria will not end until terrorism is eliminated”.

The city’s surgeon-general Fawwaz Hajjo told AFP that seven children were among 12 more people killed on Wednesday in rebel rocket attacks. “It is a humanitarian catastrophe”.

She said details of Saturday’s U.S.

Russian soldiers check a burned medical tent after rebels launched a mortar shell at a field hospital in west Aleppo, Syria, Monday, Dec. 5, 2016. The east Aleppo resident who has lived in the city throughout the war, said he, like many families, has fled his home because of the government advance.

The Syrian Army now controls 65 percent of the overall city of Aleppo, according to the military.

In the last week government forces steadily gained ground until on Wednesday – after a highly symbolic retreat from the Old City – the rebels called for the ceasefire to allow thousands of civilians to evacuate.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group also reported the gains. The Observatory said the troops are continuing their push south.

The United Nations says more than 200,000 people might still be trapped in rebel-held areas of Aleppo, which are affected by severe food and aid shortages.

Rebel defenses have collapsed in the face of a wide-ranging government offensive preceded by an intensive aerial campaign.

The UN renewed its call for an immediate ceasefire in Aleppo, warning that as many as 500 sick and injured children desperately needed to be evacuated. That is in the south of the eastern sector, where the Observatory and a Syrian military source said government forces advanced on Thursday.

Last week, SANA said Israeli jets fired two missiles from Lebanese airspace toward the outskirts of Damascus, in the Sabboura area.

Dmitry Peskov singled out the United States on Tuesday for what he said was a muted reaction to the “tragedy” in the besieged Syrian city.

“Unless the Americans come up with something new, we still have a good chance to cooperate and agree on how to resolve this east Aleppo situation”, Lavrov said. Col. Abo Bakr, a Free Syrian Army representative present at negotiations, said a provisional deal, including a cease-fire and the withdrawal of al-Qaeda linked militants, was agreed to before talks fell apart as government troops continued their sweep through the city.

The eastern districts have been under siege since July, with Syrian and Russian warplanes carrying out endless rounds of bombardment, killing hundreds of civilians and destroying hospitals that treated the wounded.

Russian Federation has been flying air raids in Syria since September 2015 and has provided longtime ally Assad’s forces with other military support during the more than five-year-old war that has killed at least 250,000 people.