Forces loyal to the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad are gaining ground in Aleppo, supported by airstrikes on rebel-held areas of the city.
Government forces now control the strategic area around al-Kindi Hospital in northern Aleppo, pro-regime media and activists said, strengthening their push toward the eastern part of the city.
Syrian state news agency SANA said the army took over the hospital, perched on a strategic hill in the northern countryside of Aleppo, killing “many terrorists” and seizing their ammunition. State-sponsored media regularly label opposition groups as “terrorists.”
Aleppo has strategic importance as the country’s largest city and a vital economic hub. The takeover of al-Kindi hospital and the surrounding area cuts off a major rebel supply route that connected the city to the northern towns between it and the Turkish border.
Ammar Abdullah, a photographer based in the suburbs of Aleppo, told CNN that the recent regime advances were very significant. “The takeover will further choke off the already under-supplied eastern Aleppo,” he said.
Government warplanes have targeted civilian gathering places such as markets, hospitals and mosques for several days, an activist with the opposition Aleppo Media Center told CNN.
“Indiscriminate bombing and shelling continues in a shocking and unrelenting manner, killing and maiming civilians, subjecting them to a level of savagery that no human should have to endure,” United Nations aid chief Stephen O’Brien said Sunday.
Final ground assault?
An estimated 10,000 regime-backed troops have gathered in advance of a possible final ground assault against rebels in Aleppo.
The past week’s attacks on rebel-held areas of the key city involved some of the worst violence since the start of the war in 2011.
On Sunday, the Syrian military called on rebels to leave the besieged eastern areas of Aleppo, saying that the Syrian and Russian forces “guarantee their safety,” according to a statement from the Syrian army.
The military called for “all armed men in the eastern neighborhoods of Aleppo city to leave these neighborhoods and leave the civilian residents to live their lives normally,” the statement published on state-run media said.
It added that Syrian and Russian military leaders will also “offer them necessary assistance.”
Hospitals hit
As fighting intensifies, treatment for the injured is becoming even more elusive, with only one of Aleppo’s four hospitals fully functioning after the shelling of facilities last week.
The M3 hospital was hit Sunday, a day after the city’s largest hospital — the M10 — was bombed for the second time in a week. Activists say the M10 and M2 hospitals are out of service.
The Syrian American Medical Society supports both hospitals.
About 30 doctors now remain in eastern Aleppo, serving a population of about 300,000, a spokesman for the society, Adham Sahloul, said.
Three other medical facilities in the al-Shaar neighborhood — a women’s hospital, a children’s hospital and the central blood bank — were also hit Friday, Sahloul said.
Weekly pause for aid
The civilian suffering hasn’t been limited to bombings. Most people in eastern Aleppo lack access to clean water due to infrastructure damage from shelling and bombing, Sahloul said.
“The health system is on the verge of total collapse, with patients being turned away,” the UN’s O’Brien said in a statement.
He called for a 48-hour weekly pause in the fighting so aid could enter the city.
“Hundreds of critical medical evacuations are urgently required. With clean water and food in very short supply, the number of people requiring urgent medical evacuations is likely to rise dramatically in the coming days.”
Kerry ‘lost the argument’
US Secretary of State John Kerry, in a meeting with a group of Syrian civilians last week, expressed sympathy for their demands that the United States intervene more forcefully amid Syrian and Russian airstrikes, according to an audio recording obtained by CNN.
He told the group that he had “lost the argument” for using military force against the Assad regime.
“I’ve argued for the use of force. I’m the guy who stood up and announced that we’re going to attack Assad for the use of weapons,” Kerry said, referring to internal deliberations within President Barack Obama’s administration after Assad’s use of chemical weapons in 2013.
An estimated 430,000 people have been killed in Syria since war broke out in 2011, following a government crackdown on opposition demonstrators. Millions have been displaced inside Syria or fled the country.