Assad and Allies Shift Focus North as Cease-fire Crumbles

The six-week cease-fire in Syria has all but collapsed, as pro-government forces and Russian artillery deploy to areas around Aleppo in what appears to be preparations for a return to full-blown fighting.

Russia and government-allied militias have steadily increased their presence in recent weeks around the opposition-held areas of Syria’s northernmost city, shifting much of the artillery used to retake Palmyra from the so-called Islamic State group (ISIS) to the north. Hundreds of Iranian-backed Shiite militants have also arrived to the area to strengthen existing government forces.

“The Syrian regime seems to be driving toward the eventual isolation of opposition forces in and around Aleppo,” an anonymous U.S. intelligence official told Voice of America.

Some 40,000 people have fled fighting to the north and south of Aleppo in recent days, according to the United Nations, leaving nearly 100,000 people trapped on the Syrian side of the Turkish border, which has been closed for more than year.

A sharp uptick in fighting over the past three weeks, combined with Tuesday’s deadly airstrikes on two marketplaces in opposition-held Idlib, has forced a “pause” in the peace talks in Geneva.

A senior Western diplomat warned on Wednesday, as members of the opposition’s High Negotiations Committee left Geneva, that peace talks might not resume for at least a year if they are abandoned now.

“If this ends now, it will be over for at least a year … The Russians will steamroll, taking advantage of a U.S. vacuum,” the diplomat said, referring to a potential U.S. preoccupation with November’s presidential election.

“There will be three million more refugees and thousands more dead … If we all leave Geneva, I don’t see the process continuing.”

ISIS Takes Another Part of Deir Ezzor City

ISIS militants made strategic advances on Wednesday in Deir Ezzor, overrunning part of the eastern city controlled by the government and advancing toward a vital regime airbase.

“ISIS seized the al-Sinaa neighborhood of Deir Ezzor on Tuesday evening and fighting is continuing on the edge of the airport,” according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

The extremist militants, who control nearly all of the oil-rich province, have made repeated attacks on the government-held portions of the region’s capital, seizing the suburb of al-Bgheliyeh in January.

Nearly 200,000 civilians remain in the government-held districts of Deir Ezzor city, which have been surrounded by ISIS since March 2014.

500 Transferred in ‘Largest Ever’ Siege Evacuation

Relief agencies began evacuating on Wednesday some 500 wounded people from four besieged towns in what has been described as the largest siege evacuation to date in the five-year war.

Half of the wounded were evacuated from the government-besieged towns of Zabadani and Madaya, near Damascus, while the other half left from the rebel-besieged towns of Fuaa and Kefraya, in the northwest.

Chair of the U.N. humanitarian task force in Syria Jan Egeland said that despite setbacks and delays, the operation was “successfully completed,” making it “the largest evacuation ever from the besieged areas of Syria.”

“They have now come to their destinations,” Egeland told the BBC. “Of course their destinations are either in government-controlled areas or in opposition-controlled areas.”

The dual evacuations were primarily carried out by the Syrian Red Crescent in cooperation with the U.N. and the International Committee of the Red Cross.

Recommended Reads

• Foreign Policy: The U.S. Wants to Design Safer Anti-Aircraft Missiles for Syria’s Rebels
• Frontline: “Syria Changed My Life:” An Interview with Marcel Mettelsiefen
• Business Insider: A Man Who Has Helped Save More Than 40,000 Lives in Syria Was Just Denied Entry Into the U.S.
• U.N. News Center: Even as Some ‘Guns Go Silent’ in Syria, Access to Besieged Areas Is Limited, Says U.N. Aid Official
• Voice of America: Turkish-Syrian Border Pocket Is Heart of Fight Against ISIS
• The WorldPost: Syrian Hospitals Under Attack: When a Red Cross Becomes a Target

Top image: Staffan de Mistura arrives to a meeting on Syria peace talks at the United Nations office on Friday, April 15, 2016, in Geneva, Switzerland. (Fabrice Coffrini/Pool Photo via AP)