[h=3]By SAM DAGHER[/h]BEIRUT—The plight of residents in many sections of the northern Syrian city of Aleppo worsened as fighting between government forces and rebels continued Monday, with neither side appearing to make decisive gains on the ground.
Government forces on Monday resumed shelling of the neighborhood of Salahuddin, on the city's southwestern side, residents and opposition activists in Aleppo said. Salahuddin was among several areas taken over earlier this month by rebels who flocked from the Aleppo countryside.
Agence France-Presse/Getty ImagesSyrian rebel fighters celebrate Monday after capturing a checkpoint in the village of Anadan, about 3.8 miles northwest of Aleppo. The strategic checkpoint of Anadan secures the rebel fighters free movement between Aleppo and Turkey.
Over the weekend, government forces backed by tanks, artillery and helicopter gunships continued a counteroffensive to reclaim those neighborhoods but were repelled by rebels on several fronts in the city, residents said.
State media claimed Sunday that government forces succeeded in wresting control of Salahuddin from the rebels, but residents and activists denied this, saying the government forces were only on the edge of the neighborhood. Salahuddin is adjacent to al-Hamdaniyah, where the regime has amassed troops and tanks, including in and around a sports stadium.
"Neither the FSA [Free Syrian Army] nor Assad's army can decide the battle and this would mean a humanitarian disaster in a city like Aleppo," said one resident sympathetic to the rebels, referring to the loosely linked grouping of army defectors and local militias now fighting President Bashar al-Assad's regime.
Many residents of Salahuddin and surrounding neighborhoods such as Saif Al-Dawlah and Al-Zebdiyeh have abandoned their homes and fled to safer parts of the city or on the outskirts, he said; many are cramming into schools and university campuses. About 30 schools and the University of Aleppo's main campus were now serving as makeshift shelters, the resident said.
United Nations humanitarian chief Valerie Amos estimated that about 200,000 residents of Aleppo have been internally displaced since Friday alone, citing figures compiled by the International Committee of the Red Cross and the Syrian Arab Red Crescent. The city has a population of more than 2.5 million.
[h=3]Syria in the Spotlight[/h]Take a look back over the highlights of the past year in Syria in a timeline, and review the latest events in a map.
"It is not known how many people remain trapped in places where fighting continues," Ms. Amos said in a statement Sunday. "Many people have sought temporary shelter in schools and other public buildings in safer areas. They urgently need food, mattresses and blankets, hygiene supplies and drinking water."
In many neighborhoods, residents scrambled to form ad hoc local committees to try to fill those needs.
One opposition activist in the northeastern neighborhood of Al-Sakhour said the committees there were focused on clearing festering piles of garbage from the streets and securing flour and fuel for bakeries in the area.
In an adjacent district, Shaar, that fell into rebel hands last week, fighters were trying to keep orderly bread lines, residents said.
But Aleppo remains deeply divided over the presence of rebel fighters in the city. Like the overwhelming majority of those fighting the regime, the rebels in Aleppo are Sunni Muslims who see the conflict as a sectarian war between the country's Sunni majority and the Shiite-linked Alawite minority to which Mr. Assad and senior members of his regime belong.
Last week, rebels acknowledged summarily shooting regime loyalists in Shaar after storming the police station there.
The rebels are "responsible for awful crimes, for sectarianism and they are no better than the regime they fight against," said Evelyn Aissa, a blogger and Aleppo native, in a message on Twitter Monday. "Just learned that my mother-in-law is being forced to give up her little house to the FSA. She has lost her home on account of being Alawite."
"Can't stop crying, can't control my anger or despair," added Ms. Aissa in a subsequent message.
Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi had warned Sunni-led Arab states and Turkey, which are supporting Syria's opposition in its battle with Tehran's ally Mr. Assad, that their insistence on toppling the Syrian regime will destabilize their own countries and the entire region.
"If they continue moving in the wrong direction then let them rest assured that the consequences of this will affect them too," said Mr. Salehi in a joint news conference Sunday with his Syrian counterpart, Walid Moallem, who was visiting Tehran.
Mr. Salehi said those countries were "wrong, naïve and deluded," if they thought the removal of Mr. Assad from power will bring about a new government in Syria friendly to their interests.
His remarks come amid heightened sectarian tensions in the region fueled by the conflict in Syria as well as by unrest in Bahrain and eastern Saudi Arabia.
Mr. Moallem, when asked if his country would invoke a mutual-defense pact with Iran, said Syria was more than capable of defending itself.
"We have sufficient defense capabilities to protect every sand grain in the homeland Syria," he said adding that his government was determined more than ever to defeat what he described as a foreign-led "conspiracy."
Mr. Moallem predicted that rebels now amassed in Aleppo would be defeated the way fighters were routed by government forces in Damascus earlier this month.
Write to Sam Dagher at [email protected]
Government forces on Monday resumed shelling of the neighborhood of Salahuddin, on the city's southwestern side, residents and opposition activists in Aleppo said. Salahuddin was among several areas taken over earlier this month by rebels who flocked from the Aleppo countryside.
Agence France-Presse/Getty ImagesSyrian rebel fighters celebrate Monday after capturing a checkpoint in the village of Anadan, about 3.8 miles northwest of Aleppo. The strategic checkpoint of Anadan secures the rebel fighters free movement between Aleppo and Turkey.
Over the weekend, government forces backed by tanks, artillery and helicopter gunships continued a counteroffensive to reclaim those neighborhoods but were repelled by rebels on several fronts in the city, residents said.
State media claimed Sunday that government forces succeeded in wresting control of Salahuddin from the rebels, but residents and activists denied this, saying the government forces were only on the edge of the neighborhood. Salahuddin is adjacent to al-Hamdaniyah, where the regime has amassed troops and tanks, including in and around a sports stadium.
"Neither the FSA [Free Syrian Army] nor Assad's army can decide the battle and this would mean a humanitarian disaster in a city like Aleppo," said one resident sympathetic to the rebels, referring to the loosely linked grouping of army defectors and local militias now fighting President Bashar al-Assad's regime.
Many residents of Salahuddin and surrounding neighborhoods such as Saif Al-Dawlah and Al-Zebdiyeh have abandoned their homes and fled to safer parts of the city or on the outskirts, he said; many are cramming into schools and university campuses. About 30 schools and the University of Aleppo's main campus were now serving as makeshift shelters, the resident said.
United Nations humanitarian chief Valerie Amos estimated that about 200,000 residents of Aleppo have been internally displaced since Friday alone, citing figures compiled by the International Committee of the Red Cross and the Syrian Arab Red Crescent. The city has a population of more than 2.5 million.
[h=3]Syria in the Spotlight[/h]Take a look back over the highlights of the past year in Syria in a timeline, and review the latest events in a map.
"It is not known how many people remain trapped in places where fighting continues," Ms. Amos said in a statement Sunday. "Many people have sought temporary shelter in schools and other public buildings in safer areas. They urgently need food, mattresses and blankets, hygiene supplies and drinking water."
In many neighborhoods, residents scrambled to form ad hoc local committees to try to fill those needs.
One opposition activist in the northeastern neighborhood of Al-Sakhour said the committees there were focused on clearing festering piles of garbage from the streets and securing flour and fuel for bakeries in the area.
In an adjacent district, Shaar, that fell into rebel hands last week, fighters were trying to keep orderly bread lines, residents said.
But Aleppo remains deeply divided over the presence of rebel fighters in the city. Like the overwhelming majority of those fighting the regime, the rebels in Aleppo are Sunni Muslims who see the conflict as a sectarian war between the country's Sunni majority and the Shiite-linked Alawite minority to which Mr. Assad and senior members of his regime belong.
Last week, rebels acknowledged summarily shooting regime loyalists in Shaar after storming the police station there.
The rebels are "responsible for awful crimes, for sectarianism and they are no better than the regime they fight against," said Evelyn Aissa, a blogger and Aleppo native, in a message on Twitter Monday. "Just learned that my mother-in-law is being forced to give up her little house to the FSA. She has lost her home on account of being Alawite."
"Can't stop crying, can't control my anger or despair," added Ms. Aissa in a subsequent message.
Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi had warned Sunni-led Arab states and Turkey, which are supporting Syria's opposition in its battle with Tehran's ally Mr. Assad, that their insistence on toppling the Syrian regime will destabilize their own countries and the entire region.
"If they continue moving in the wrong direction then let them rest assured that the consequences of this will affect them too," said Mr. Salehi in a joint news conference Sunday with his Syrian counterpart, Walid Moallem, who was visiting Tehran.
Mr. Salehi said those countries were "wrong, naïve and deluded," if they thought the removal of Mr. Assad from power will bring about a new government in Syria friendly to their interests.
His remarks come amid heightened sectarian tensions in the region fueled by the conflict in Syria as well as by unrest in Bahrain and eastern Saudi Arabia.
Mr. Moallem, when asked if his country would invoke a mutual-defense pact with Iran, said Syria was more than capable of defending itself.
"We have sufficient defense capabilities to protect every sand grain in the homeland Syria," he said adding that his government was determined more than ever to defeat what he described as a foreign-led "conspiracy."
Mr. Moallem predicted that rebels now amassed in Aleppo would be defeated the way fighters were routed by government forces in Damascus earlier this month.
Write to Sam Dagher at [email protected]