Aleppo in the eye of the storm as Syrian army seeks gains By Jim Muir

BBC News Published duration 22 October 2015 Related Topics Syrian civil war

image copyright Reuters image caption Bombardments in rebel-held areas of Aleppo have been intense

Aleppo, Syria's second city in status but largest in practice, was late to join the war that has ravaged many parts of the country.

Now it finds itself in the eye of the storm, as Syrian government troops press in around its southern edge with the help of intensive Russian air strikes, militants from the self-styled Islamic State (IS) gain new ground on the city's northern approaches and regime and rebel forces battle it out daily in the battered streets of the divided city itself.

Whether the series of ground offensives recently unleashed by the Syrian army will lead to a drive to regain control of Aleppo itself is the kind of issue that President Assad will have discussed with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, during his surprise visit to Moscow on Tuesday.

For the moment, most attention is focused on a belt of villages around 10 miles south of the city.

That's where regime forces began another offensive last week, pushing into areas held by an array of non-IS rebel groups as Russian jets carried out a flurry of attacks to prepare the way.

Supply lines

Panic-stricken civilians fled their homes in a string of villages as Syrian troops battled forward and bombs and missiles exploded around them.

Estimates for the number of displaced vary, with the UN saying 35,000 left that area and other sources giving much higher figures.

But most of the Syrian army's offensives seem to be aimed at securing its own supply lines - along the main arterial highway linking Damascus to Aleppo via Homs and Hama, rather than making spectacular thrusts deep into rebel-held territory.

War in Syria

image copyright EPA image caption President Assad was in Moscow this week to discuss Russian moves to bolster his forces

The goal so far appears to be to improve the limits of the areas under regime control - the main cities and the coastal belt - and make them more defensible.

The Russian intervention has made that possible. But there is a limit to what air power can achieve - as the Americans and their allies are experiencing both in Syria and Iraq - in the absence of cohesive, effective and motivated ground forces.

Russian jets can't compensate for President Assad's basic problem - a dearth of fighting manpower.

Shia militias, such as the Lebanese Hezbollah and even the reported deployment of some Iranian Revolutionary Guards, can only go so far in making up the deficiency.

"The Russian move has allowed the regime to go on the offensive and made some limited gains possible, but it hasn't turned the tide in terms of winning the war," said Yezid Sayigh, senior analyst at the Carnegie Middle East Centre.

For Aleppo the city, this means that a major offensive to drive the rebels out of the eastern quarters where they are entrenched seems unlikely in the coming weeks and even months.

image copyright Reuters image caption Many residents have left Aleppo; some of those that remain have moved across the lines to safer parts of the city

Many residents from the rebel-held districts have moved to government-controlled parts of town, where daily bombardments are less heavy.

The city had a pre-war population of well over two million. Many of them have already fled, especially from the large Armenian Christian minority.

But the possibility of a major attack on the city had raised fears in nearby Turkey of another huge flood of refugees pouring across the border.

Blockaded garrison

Rather than an all-out offensive by either side for control of the city, hostilities are likely to continue and intensify in the surrounding area.

In addition to the campaign to control the villages and main highway to the south, government forces have launched a concerted drive to relieve their embattled garrison at the Kuweiris military airbase, roughly 20 miles to the east of Aleppo.

The troops there have been blockaded for months by militants from IS, who control a stretch of territory to the north and east, and are trying to press further around the northern side of the city against rebel groups there, threatening their lifelines to the Turkish border.

The battle for Kuweiris is one of the few areas where government forces are directly engaged in combat with IS, giving some validation to Russia's claim that it is striking those militants.

The bulk of the air strikes are against the array of other rebel groups, many of them Islamist and some western-backed, which were mounting a real threat to the regime.

For President Assad to reconquer the whole country he would need far more help on the ground than his Russian and Iranian allies are likely to offer.