IT’S an everyday street scene showing life in a bustling city as people head to work, cross the street and walk past neat shop fronts and smart cafes with their children.
This (below) was Aleppo in January 2010, a year before the outbreak of war broke which has since reduced the once prosperous metropolis to a pile of smouldering ruins and caused the deaths of tens of thousands of its residents.
Yesterday as protesters gathered outside the Russian consulate in Edinburgh to condemn the military support Russia has given to Syrian President Bashar-al-Assad, a ceasefire deal between rebels and government forces broke down, threatening plans to evacuate the remaining fighters and trapped and desperate civilians.
The withdrawal was supposed to start at dawn, but shelling resumed in the early hours and buses intended for the evacuations returned to their depots.
Activists and rebels trapped in the opposition’s last sliver of territory in Aleppo said pro-government forces had struck their district with dozens of rockets since mid-morning.
“The bombardment is scarcely to be believed on the eastern neighbourhoods and until now 40 people have been wounded,” said Ibrahim al-Haj, a spokesman for the Syrian Civil Defence first responders.
“They are using all forms of weapons.”
The Syrian Government ordered its green-coloured buses back, signalling that the deal mediated between Ankara and Moscow on Tuesday night to bring the fighting to an end in Aleppo was off.
The Lebanese al-Manar TV broadcast footage of the buses leaving the evacuation point empty and said government forces had resumed fighting with rebels in the city.
Al-Manar is the media arm of the Lebanese militant Shiite group Hezbollah, which is fighting alongside Syrian President Bashar Assad’s government forces.
Activists in eastern Aleppo blamed government forces, saying they shot first. Media activist Mahmoud Raslan said he was reporting for a Turkish agency when a rocket crashed beside him at around 10.15am.
The Russian Defence Ministry said in a statement that the rebels “resumed the hostilities” at dawn.
Turkish foreign minister Mevlut Cavusoglu accused the Syrian government and its allies of trying to scuttle the deal.
The last-minute deal was mediated by Ankara and Moscow as the rebel enclave rapidly dissolved and ceded more and more territory in the face of the brutal advance by Syrian forces, backed by Russia and assisted by Shiite militias from Lebanon, Iraq and Afghanistan.
Late on Tuesday, the UN envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, called for immediate access to the former rebel enclave to confirm the end of military operations and to oversee the safe departure of tens of thousands of civilians and opposition fighters. De Mistura was at the Security Council where an emergency meeting for Aleppo was held.
Earlier yesterday, the pan-Arab al-Mayadeen TV broadcast footage of the government buses idling at the agreed-on evacuation point.
The TV said the buses are prepared to move 5,000 fighters and their families to Atareb, an opposition-held town in the north-western Aleppo countryside.
Meanwhile, an opposition official said that there were 800 sick and wounded people requiring immediate medical evacuation from eastern Aleppo.
The dramatic developments surrounding Aleppo, which would restore the remainder of what was once Syria’s largest city to President Assad’s forces after months of heavy fighting and a crippling siege, followed reports of mass killings by government forces closing in on the final few blocks still held by the rebels.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told the emergency meeting late on Tuesday that he had received “credible reports” of civilians killed by pro-government forces as they swept into the last rebel areas in Aleppo.
“To the Assad regime, Russia and Iran – three member states behind the conquest of and carnage in Aleppo – you bear responsibility for these atrocities,” said US Ambassador Samantha Power.
Bashar al-Ja’afari, Syria’s UN ambassador, denied any mass killings or revenge attack.
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