Up to 20000 stranded at Syria border with Turkey

Aleppo, once Syria’s thriving commercial center, has been carved up between government- and rebel-controlled districts since the summer of 2012.

The regime forces attacking in and around Aleppo were aided by Iranian advisers and Hezbollah fighters, according to the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a monitoring group.

Turkey says it is prepared to help the refugees but the frontier is shut.

In the last 48 hours, following the stalling of Geneva peace talks, government forces have intensified their ground offensive, while the Russian airforce has flown almost 1000 sorties in the heaviest air bombardment of the near five-year war.

“There is no denying that the efforts of the Russian military to buck up and strengthen the Assad regime’s grip on power only gives the Assad regime less of an incentive to come to the negotiating table and act constructively in conversations there”, he added.

“Now the northern countryside [of Aleppo] is totally encircled and the humanitarian situation is very hard”.

The rebels’ main supply line to Turkey was severed on Wednesday when regime troops broke an opposition siege of two Shiite towns, Nubol and Zahraa, on the route to the border. If Syrian government forces launch a full-blooded assault to oust rebels and militant Islamists, it has been estimated as many as a million people may become refugees.

She said another 5,000 to 10,000 displaced people had gathered at Azaz, a northwestern Syrian city close to the border with Turkey.

Luxembourg Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn said “everyone has seen the pictures from Aleppo, the tens of thousands of people who are fleeing, fleeing for their lives”.

Meanwhile, the United Nations said in its statement that access to affected people was becoming increasingly hard amid the fighting.

“This is a huge number of people, and taking them all into Turkey at the same time will create a security problem for Turkey and for Europe as well”, said Ali Sahin, the deputy minister for European affairs, who said the number of potential new refugees was expected to grow to 100,000. Russian Federation insists it only targets what it calls terrorists.

Iran has defended the intervention in Syria, saying it is defending Shiite shrines there.

“People are coming to the border and want to cross into Syria with the hope that they can sneak their relatives back into Turkey”, he said.

What is the Syria conflict?

Moscow intervened militarily in Syria’s war at the end of September.

Anti-government protests developed into a civil war that, four years on, has ground to a stalemate, with the Assad government, the Islamic State group, an array of Syrian rebels and Kurdish fighters all holding territory.

A day of intense battles across Syria and it seems the odds are favoring the Syrian government forces and its allies.

More than 250,000 Syrians have been killed and a million injured.

As part of the offensive, which began earlier this week, pro-government troops have recaptured several villages near the Turkish border, sending thousands of area residents fleeing toward Turkey.

How has the world reacted?

US Secretary of State John Kerry on Friday told reporters Russian Federation had said it was prepared to stop the bombings, which he blamed for killing women and children “in large numbers”.