Food Scarce in Aleppo's Pounded Rebel Bastions
Rebel-held neighborhoods of Syria's northern city Aleppo, which faced renewed army attacks with artillery and mortar fire on Tuesday, are struggling with severe food shortages, a local activist told Agence France Presse.
"The regime prevents food from reaching the liberated areas (under rebel control). Residents are forced to smuggle products from neighborhood to neighborhood," said Barra, an activist in the opposition bastion of Sakhur in Aleppo's northeast.
"When I buy something, I have to go to several grocery stores and supermarkets before finding what I want: eggs, yogurt, rice, children’s milk are almost nonexistent. Markets are almost empty," he said via Skype.
"It is difficult to find gas canisters also ... it's a real siege, collective punishment," said the activist who would give only one name. "If the regime could deprive us of air, it would."
According to Barra, "garbage is everywhere and people are trying to clean what they can, but the bombing is so intense."
On Tuesday, the activist said that several districts were bombarded with artillery and mortar fire as was an area near the Aleppo airport, bordering the Nayrab district in the southwest of the city.
In the southwest rebel bastion of Salaheddin, one rebel died in clashes with government forces, while a civilian was killed by sniper fire in the southern Sukari neighborhood, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
It added that two girls were killed in shelling elsewhere in the province.
On Monday, a senior Syrian army commander in charge of the five-week military offensive on the commercial capital told AFP that government forces would recapture Aleppo from rebel forces within 10 days.
In Damascus, fighting broke out in the Yarmuk Palestinian refugee camp after midnight Monday between members of the PFLP (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine) and rebels, the Britain-based Observatory said.
It also reported fighting between rebels and the army in the capital's southern district of Tadamun, which is adjacent to the camp.
The Syrian Revolution General Council, a network of opposition activists, said that panicked residents were fleeing the Yarmuk camp in droves amid the fighting.
In the eastern city of Deir al-Zour, violent clashes carried on during the night and into the early morning Tuesday, as rebels battled for control of a military security headquarters.
The opposition fighters finally took control of the office, losing two of their men, while eight government troops were killed in the fighting.
Two rebels were killed in fighting elsewhere in Deir al-Zour province.
The violence followed a bloody day on Monday when 153 people -- 81 civilians, including 19 children and 14 women, 42 soldiers and 30 rebels -- were killed nationwide, according to the Observatory.
The watchdog says more than 26,000 people have been killed in Syria since the revolt against the rule of President Bashar Assad began in March last year -- more than two-thirds of them civilians.
Source: Agence France Presse
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