Both Rebels, Regime Claim Progress as Syria’s Aleppo Fight Escalates

Reporter: Only the Fighters Remain in Aleppo

Fighting in Syria’s northern city of Aleppo continues to escalate today, with both rebels and regime claiming major progress in the fight and predicting imminent victory and looking beyond the fight to whatever diplomatic gains they can wrest from a win.

The rebels are loudly insisting that the upper hand is theirs, promising to turn Syria’s largest city into the “regime’s grave,” while their international backers continue to play up both rebel gains and feigned concern for Aleppo’s civilian population.

Which is apparently irrelevant, as one of the few reporters on the ground, Kim Sengupta, is reporting that Aleppo is virtually deserted and that “only the fighters remain” in the city. Since both sides spent almost a solid week sending reinforcements and promising “the mother of all battles,” it seems like most of the population took the hint and left while the getting was good.

At the same time, Syria’s Army insists that they have made significant gains, including in the Salaheddine neighborhood, and predicted that they would return the city, Syria’s financial capital, to relative calm within a matter of days.

Author: Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.