You're reading: Syria’s Aleppo running low on food amid siege

BEIRUT — Food and cooking gas were in short supply and power cuts plunged homes into darkness as soldiers and rebels battled Tuesday to tip the scales in the fight for Aleppo, Syria's largest city and the current focus of its civil war.

Life for Aleppo’s 3 million residents was becoming
increasingly unbearable as a military siege entered its 11th day. While
rebels seized two police stations, Syrian ground forces pummeled the
opposition strongholds of Salaheddine and Seif al-Dawla in the city’s
southwest, activists said. Government helicopters also pounded those
neighborhoods.

“The regime couldn’t enter the neighborhoods so
they were shelling from a distance with helicopters and artillery,” said
Mohammed Nabehan, who fled Aleppo for the Kilis refugee camp just
across the Turkish border some 30 miles (50 kilometers) away.

Nabehan and others said it was a struggle to find food.

“The
humanitarian situation here is very bad,” Mohammed Saeed, an activist
living in the city, told The Associated Press by Skype. “There is not
enough food and people are trying to leave. We really need support from
the outside. There is random shelling against civilians,” he added. “The
city has pretty much run out of cooking gas, so people are cooking on
open flames or with electricity, which cuts out a lot.”

Days of
shelling have forced many civilians to flee to other neighborhoods or
even escape the city altogether. The U.N. said Sunday that 200,000 had
left Aleppo.

As the bloodshed mounted, the Arab League chief accused President Bashar Assad’s regime of atrocities.

“The
massacres that are happening in Aleppo and other places in Syria amount
to war crimes that are punishable under international law,” Arab League
Secretary-General Nabil Elaraby said in Cairo.

U.S. Defense
Secretary Leon Panetta said Washington is “not contemplating any
unilateral steps” in Syria. There are fears that military intervention
could exacerbate the war. Syria’s close ties to Iran and the Islamic
militant group Hezbollah in Lebanon mean that the conflict has the
potential to draw in the country’s neighbors.

The battle for
Aleppo is among the most significant of the 17-month-old Syrian
uprising. If the regime loses its grip on Aleppo, that could be a
tipping point in the civil war.

“It remains the case that for its
own legitimacy and credibility, the Syrian government must regain
control of Aleppo,” said David Hartwell, senior Middle East analyst at
the defense and intelligence group IHS Jane’s. “It also remains the case
that the opposition, not fixated yet on holding territory, intend to
make the Syrian army pay a high price as they do this.”

Although
the rebels are outgunned by the regime’s heavy weapons, they have
captured a number of government tanks in operations against army
positions outside the city, activists say. Saeed said they planned to
use them in future operations.

Rami Abdul-Rahman, director of the
Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said rebels seized
the Salihin and Bab al-Neyrab police stations Tuesday in battles that
lasted several hours. He said the fighting killed about 40 police
officers and soldiers as well as a general.

Still, the regime
appears to have regained the momentum in the days since a July 18
bombing that killed four top Assad lieutenants. Many observers expect
government forces to drown out the rebel run on Aleppo as they did in
Damascus last week.

The official Syrian news agency said
government forces were pursuing the “remnants of armed terrorist groups”
in Aleppo’s Salaheddine neighborhood and inflicting heavy losses.

The
government refers to its opponents as terrorists, saying the uprising
is being driven by foreign extremists — not Syrians seeking reform.
Although the conflict began with mostly peaceful protests, the spiral of
violence has appeared to radicalize at least some of the opposition.
There are signs of militant jihads joining the fray.

A
high-ranking Western diplomat familiar with the intelligence assessments
on Syria said there is a great deal of concern in the West over the
flow of foreign militants into Syria to fight a jihad, or holy war,
against Assad’s regime.

Militants from Chechnya, Yemen, Libya,
Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan have been joining the rebels in
significant number, he said. They are entering by way of Iraq and
Lebanon and bringing along skills gleaned from battling the Americans
and Russians, according to the diplomat, who spoke on condition of
anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss such matters.

Saudi
Arabia and Qatar have both expressed a willingness to fund the revolt
and are believed to be sending money to rebels to purchase weapons. On
Tuesday, the official Saudi Press Agency said a weeklong national
campaign to support “our brothers in Syria” had collected $117 million
in cash donations to outfit relief convoys for Syrian refugees.

The violence has fueled a growing refugee crisis in neighboring countries.

According
Turkish prime minister’s office, some 44,000 Syrian refugees are being
sheltered in tent cities and temporary housing in camps along the
border. While Turkish authorities say they have yet to see a massive
surge in refugees from Aleppo, they are prepared to house up to 100,000.

Jordan,
which also has witnessed a steady influx of refugees, is building a
tent camp along its border — something it was initially reluctant to do
for fear of embarrassing Syria by calling attention to the refugee
problem. But with 142,000 Syrians having already fled across the border,
according to the Jordanians, new facilities were needed to house them
all. Jordan said this week that up to 2,000 new refugees are arriving
daily.

As the fighting rages, Syria’s political opposition continued to splinter.

Haitham
al-Maleh, an 81-year-old lawyer and veteran Syrian opposition figure,
announced in Cairo that he was forming his own group, the Council of
Syrian Revolutionary Trustees. The opposition’s fragmentation has proved
to be one of its most serious pitfalls, and there is little chance that
his small council will change the calculus of the uprising.

The infighting has prevented the movement from gaining the traction it needs to present a credible alternative to Assad.

Indeed,
many among the rebel ranks discount the political opposition entirely,
saying it is out of touch with the people on the ground. In the past
month, the rebels have demonstrated greater capabilities and have
mounted the biggest challenges to the regime so far in the revolt, even
though many of the rebel groups are also disparate and operate largely
independently.

But the longer the civil war continues, the higher the likelihood of drawing in neighboring countries.

Turkish
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in a televised address Tuesday,
signaled that Turkey would not remain indifferent to developments in
Syria that could threaten its security.

Erdogan did not elaborate,
but his government has said that ethnic Kurds have seized control of
five towns in northern Syria. The Turks are concerned that Syrian Kurds
may seek an autonomous region or an alliance with their ethnic brethren
in northern Iraq and Turkey. Kurdish rebels have long been fighting for
an autonomous region in Turkey.