As Calm Begins Elsewhere, Fighting Rages in Syria’s Aleppo

Airstrikes, Rebel Shelling Continue to Pound Civilians

The Syrian Army’s promised “regime of calm” is taking effect in the portions of the country where it was promised this weekend, but violence continues to rage in the northern city of Aleppo, as throughout the weekend military airstrikes pounded rebel neighborhoods, and rebels shelled the government districts.

Death tolls from the strikes over the weekend are uncertain so far, but appear to at the very least be down from the massive tolls seen late last week, when airstrikes pounded hospitals and other medical facilities in rebel-held parts of the city.

The Red Cross is calling for an immediate restoration of calm in Aleppo, and Russia and the US are said to be feverishly working to try to end the violence there, though they don’t appear to be making much progress on either side.

The military made much of not including Aleppo in its “calm,” while the rebels in the area are dominated by al-Qaeda’s Nusra Front, which has never been a party to any ceasefires. Even the Islamist factions who are in the ceasefire, and fighting alongside Nusra, are ruling out any regional ceasefires now, after the recent peace talks collapsed.

Nearly two weeks of trading fire in Aleppo has killed nearly 250 people, according to Syrian Observatory for Human Rights stats, and those deaths were almost exclusively civilians,, with neither side making any real successful attacks on the other’s combatants.

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.