{"id":24974,"date":"2016-04-29T01:54:45","date_gmt":"2016-04-29T01:54:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/syria-army-readies-aleppo-offensive-as-civilian\/"},"modified":"2016-04-29T01:53:53","modified_gmt":"2016-04-29T01:53:53","slug":"syria-army-readies-aleppo-offensive-as-civilian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/syria-army-readies-aleppo-offensive-as-civilian\/","title":{"rendered":"Syria army readies Aleppo offensive as civilian toll rises"},"content":{"rendered":"

{Nearly 200 people have been killed in Aleppo in the past week.}<\/p>\n

The Syrian army was preparing an offensive on Thursday to retake Aleppo, as escalating fighting in the divided second city killed dozens of civilians in a new blow to a tattered truce.<\/p>\n

Nearly 200 people have been killed in Aleppo in the past week as rebels have pounded government-held neighbourhoods with rocket and artillery fire and the regime has hit rebel areas with air raids.<\/p>\n

UN envoy Staffan de Mistura warned the hard-won February 27 ceasefire was now \u201cbarely alive\u201d and pleaded for urgent action by its co-sponsors Russia and the United States to rescue it.<\/p>\n

But pro-government newspaper Al-Watan said the army was poised for \u201cdecisive battle\u201d for Aleppo and the surrounding province while a source close to the regime said the campaign was imminent.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow is the time to launch the battle for the complete liberation of Aleppo,\u201d the paper said, adding that it \u201cwill not take long to begin, nor to finish.\u201d<\/p>\n

The regime source told AFP that \u201cthe army is preparing a huge operation in the coming days to push the rebels away from the city by encircling it and creating a security zone\u201d.<\/p>\n

REBEL CONTROL<\/p>\n

Rebels have controlled eastern districts of Aleppo since 2012, while western neighbourhoods are held by the regime.<\/p>\n

Control of the surrounding province is divided between a myriad of armed groups – jihadists of Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State group, Kurdish militia and various rebel factions as well as the army.<\/p>\n

Further north in the province, rebels including the powerful Islamist Ahrar al-Sham group and Kurdish forces fought fierce battles Wednesday and early Thursday that left 64 fighters dead, a monitor said.<\/p>\n

The upsurge in violence in and around Aleppo has severely strained the February truce between the government and non-jihadist rebels and cast a shadow over the UN envoy\u2019s hopes of convening a new round of peace talks next month.<\/p>\n

Rebel rocket and artillery fire on government-held neighbourhoods on Thursday killed 22 civilians, including two children, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.<\/p>\n

Regime air strikes on rebel-held districts, including the densely populated Bustan al-Qasr neighbourhood, killed 31 civilians, including three children, according to the British-based monitor, which relies on a network of sources on the ground.<\/p>\n

An AFP correspondent said every building in sight in Bustan al-Qasr had had its windows blown out.<\/p>\n

\"Syrians<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

{Nearly 200 people have been killed in Aleppo in the past week.} The Syrian army was preparing an offensive on Thursday to retake Aleppo, as escalating fighting in the divided second city killed dozens of civilians in a new blow to a tattered truce. Nearly 200 people have been killed in Aleppo in the past […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[101],"byline":[228],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-24974","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-internationl","byline-afp"],"bylines":[{"id":228,"name":"AFP","slug":"afp","description":"Agence France-Presse is an international news agency headquartered in Paris. It is the oldest news agency in the world and one of the largest. ","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":71}],"contributors":[{"id":228,"name":"AFP","slug":"afp","description":"Agence France-Presse is an international news agency headquartered in Paris. It is the oldest news agency in the world and one of the largest. ","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":71}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24974","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24974"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24974\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24974"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24974"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24974"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=24974"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=24974"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}