Syrian Forces Press Aleppo, Sending Thousands Fleeing
By ANNE BARNARD

BEIRUT, Lebanon — Syrian government and allied forces pressed their most significant advance in months on Friday, sending insurgents scrambling and tens of thousands of civilians fleeing toward the border with Turkey.

The advance has accelerated in recent days, with new momentum from heavy Russian airstrikes in the northern province of Aleppo, according to Syrian state news media, residents and antigovernment activists. The government’s gains have given a morale boost to loyalists and prompted opponents of President Bashar al-Assad, including Turkey and Saudi Arabia, to calculate their next moves.

The government’s gains in Aleppo Province, building on earlier ones in Dara’a in the south and Latakia in the north, also scuttled United Nations-mediated peace talks this week in Geneva. Neither side saw much to discuss there: The government believed it was achieving its goals on the battlefield, while the opposition accused the Assad administration and Russia of using negotiations as a cover for indiscriminate attacks.

Russia’s four months of escalating military intervention have strengthened the government, allowing Mr. Assad’s forces to go on the offensive in several provinces at once for the first time in years. It remains to be seen whether the most recent advances will hold. But they have dealt major blows to the armed opposition and made crucial military gains around the divided city of Aleppo, the provincial capital that was once Syria’s largest city and industrial hub.

Government forces and pro-government militias, including the Lebanese group Hezbollah, have cut the main supply route for weapons and humanitarian aid north of the city. If the government and its allies advance farther south, they could surround rebels in Aleppo and employ the type of “starve or surrender” siege the government has used elsewhere.

Mr. Assad’s forces also broke the insurgents’ siege of two towns near Aleppo, Nubol and Zahra, which had survived on government airdrops of food. People there were celebrating on Friday and thanking the troops in videos posted on social media.

The government gains have increased the sense of alarm among antigovernment insurgents and their civilian supporters, sending thousands of people, including women and children with whatever they can carry, fleeing through orchards.

In one video posted on social media, a woman can be heard calling out: “Russia is bombing us, Iran is bombing us, Daesh” — another name for the Islamic State — “is bombing us. Where should we go?”

A man who said he was from Homs Province, several hundred miles to the south, said he had fled to one town after another in Aleppo Province, always chased by bombardments and shelling. “They killed my mother. They killed my father. They killed my brother,” he said. “Where are the Arabs? Where is Islam?”

The United Nations said 20,000 people were stuck at the border fence between Syria and Turkey, and aid groups said as many as 50,000 were expected. Turkish officials have said they will allow refugees to cross, but it was not clear when they would open the crossing or how many would be allowed through. A few people requiring urgent medical care are being taken to Turkish hospitals.

The United Nations’ director of humanitarian operations, John Ging, told the Security Council on Friday that the situation around Aleppo, and the closing of an important border crossing with Turkey, could prevent food and medicine from reaching 325,000 people caught in the fighting, according to two diplomats who attended the closed meeting.

Opponents of Mr. Assad from the area under attack expressed anguish that the government advances had continued while talks were set to take place in Geneva. Yaser al-Hajj, an activist who has often helped foreign journalists in Aleppo, left the talks before they were halted when he heard of the intensifying attacks not far from his hometown, Marea.

“I cannot stay here,” he said at the airport in Geneva before he left. “Why is the United States letting this happen? They are letting Russia do whatever it wants. This will help the terrorists.”

Mr. Hajj was referring to fighters for the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, which he said would benefit from the losses suffered by rival insurgents. Russia has said it sees no distinction between the Islamic State and other insurgent groups.

Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary, said the Obama administration was deeply concerned about the worsening humanitarian crisis in Aleppo.

“There’s the possibility that government forces backed by the Russians would encircle that city and essentially lay siege to that city, and that would obviously exacerbate a terrible humanitarian situation there,” Mr. Earnest said.

He also said Russia’s intensifying military campaign to support the Syrian government was delaying a political resolution to the war because it “gives the Assad regime less of an incentive to come to the negotiating table and act constructively in conversations there.”

After the Security Council meeting, the French ambassador, François Delattre, criticized Russia for its bombardments and said the Syrian opposition could not be expected to “negotiate with a gun to their head.” Vitaly I. Churkin, the Russian ambassador to the United Nations, responded that a broader cease-fire would be required. “We cannot stop this unilaterally,” he said.

The new advances are squeezing rebel groups north of Aleppo that have been holding off Islamic State militants, who want to expand into a coveted section of rebel-held territory near the Turkish border. Long controlled by United States-backed insurgents and hard-line Islamists, that strip of land is wanted by nearly every party to the conflict.

Kurdish militias want the area to connect two enclaves they control near the border to the east and west. That is where the United States and Turkey sought last year to create a “safe zone” for refugees, free of Islamic State fighters. That plan broke down when the two countries, NATO allies, disagreed on the details.

Turkey would be particularly troubled if the Kurds, whom it considers its main enemy in the area, further encroached on the border area.

It would be unusual, though, for Turkey to send in troops without consulting with the United States, even though their relationship has been strained by Turkey’s frustration that the United States is more focused on battling the Islamic State than Mr. Assad.

A Saudi official said on Wednesday that the kingdom would consider sending troops to Syria to fight the Islamic State, but it appeared he had spoken without consulting with regional allies, and it was not clear what kind of deployment he meant or where it would be.

In neighboring Idlib Province, west of Aleppo, insurgents were on alert for shortages and price increases because of the cut in the Aleppo supply road, according to an antigovernment activist in the area.

“Today, I wanted to buy salt,” said the activist, Mohammad Moataz. “The guy told me: Starting the middle of this month, no more salt. No cars are coming from Aleppo. The bakers couldn’t find salt for their bakeries.”

The blockade on the road will most likely force cargo to be rerouted through Idlib Province, where the territory around the border crossing with Turkey is controlled by the Qaeda-linked Nusra Front. That “will probably give the jihadists greater leverage” over other rebel groups, wrote Columb Strack, a senior analyst at IHS Country Risk.

Airstrikes and bombardments in the area may indicate that government forces plan on pressing south to cut the Idlib road as well and surround Aleppo.

“This would provide the government with substantial leverage to eventually negotiate over the future of the city from a position of strength,” Mr. Strack wrote, adding that residents of Aleppo “would probably face a humanitarian crisis, as already seen in other besieged towns such as Madaya, but on a much larger scale.”

敘利亞政府軍來了 7萬平民…逃了

紐約時報報導，敘利亞政府軍及其盟軍五日進一步向叛軍占領的北部大城阿勒坡挺進，取得數個月來最重要的進展，城內叛軍開始敗逃，但也有七萬平民為逃避衝突而湧向土耳其邊界。

聯合國說，有兩萬平民被困在敘利亞與土耳其之間的邊境圍欄邊，援助組織則稱困於當地的人數估計高達五萬。

來自敘利亞國營新聞媒體、居民及反政府人士消息指出，在俄羅斯於阿勒坡省北部展開嚴密空襲的新動力帶領下，敘國政府軍近日加速進逼阿勒坡。這項斬獲也讓忠於大馬士革當局的勢力士氣大振，並促使土耳其與沙烏地阿拉伯等反對總統阿塞德的國家開始盤算下一步。

此外，敘國政府軍在阿勒坡省取得進展，也使聯合國本周在日內瓦召開的和平談判遭受阻礙。敘國政府與反對派雙方並未進行多少討論，前者認為正於戰場上實現自身目標，後者則指責阿塞德政府與俄羅斯以談判為掩護，肆意攻擊。

另據法新社報導，在俄羅斯支持的敘國政府軍節節進逼下，叛軍面臨全面潰敗的處境，因他們對阿勒坡城的主要補給線遭到切斷，且該城可能被完全包圍。

分析家說，叛軍與支持他們的國際勢力目前沒有多少選項可以阻止政府軍新一輪的進攻，而政府軍的此番進逼正值聯合國所支持的和平談判破裂之際。

國際戰略研究所的資深分析師荷凱恩說：「叛軍在走下坡，且下滑坡度愈來愈陡。」

原文參照：
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/06/world/middleeast/syria-aleppo.html

Video：After months of Russian airstrikes, thousands of Syrians have flocked to the Turkish border from the city of Aleppo.
http://nyti.ms/1nSzSYx

2016-02-07．聯合報．A13．兩岸 國際．編譯陳韋廷