{"id":22116,"date":"2016-02-10T09:03:56","date_gmt":"2016-02-10T17:03:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/hoarding-in-syrias-largest-city-as-government-advances\/"},"modified":"2016-02-10T09:03:56","modified_gmt":"2016-02-10T17:03:56","slug":"hoarding-in-syrias-largest-city-as-government-advances","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/hoarding-in-syrias-largest-city-as-government-advances\/","title":{"rendered":"Hoarding in Syria’s largest city as government advances"},"content":{"rendered":"

BEIRUT \u2014<\/strong> As government troops close in on Aleppo, some residents are preparing to flee Syria\u2019s largest city while others are hoarding food in case of a long siege, even laying out bread on rooftops to dry it out for storage.<\/p>\n

The U.N. warned Tuesday that hundreds of thousands of people could be cut off from humanitarian aid as siege conditions tighten around the rebel-controlled eastern part of the city.<\/p>\n

The threat of starvation haunts Aleppo\u2019s residents, who have seen images of emaciated children and adults from other blockaded parts of Syria. An estimated 1 million people are trapped in besieged areas, according to a report issued Tuesday by the Siege Watch project.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is a lot of fear, especially after people saw Madaya,\u201d said opposition media activist Karam Almasri, referring to a besieged town in southern Syria.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey don\u2019t want the same to happen to them,\u201d added Almasri, who lives in Aleppo\u2019s war-ravaged neighborhood of Bustan al-Qasr. He and others spoke to The Associated Press via Skype or social media.<\/p>\n

Aleppo looms large in Syria\u2019s 5-year-old conflict, both as the country\u2019s former commercial capital and a bastion of the opposition in the north. The city has been divided since 2012, with the government controlling the western portion, while the eastern part is held by insurgents. Many neighborhoods and historic buildings have been ruined by street fighting and aerial bombardment.<\/p>\n

A government offensive in the countryside north of Aleppo has cut a vital opposition supply route from the Turkish border, leaving just one corridor from the east to the outside world. That route is squeezed between two government fronts to a border crossing farther west and is exposed to heavy bombardment by the Russian air force. Those airstrikes are helping Syrian forces, supported by Iranian, Lebanese, and Iraqi militias, to advance.<\/p>\n

The only other routes to the north are blocked by militants from the Islamic State group and, to a lesser degree, by Kurdish forces.<\/p>\n

Aid operations also have been disrupted.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve been able to access Aleppo through the western route, but it\u2019s become very risky,\u201d said Dalia Al-Awqati, programs director for Mercy Corps in northern Syria. The international relief organization provides food assistance to 66,000 people in eastern Aleppo.<\/p>\n

The prewar population of the provincial capital exceeded 2.1 million, but there are no accurate statistics about how many people still live there. The U.N. estimates only 300,000 remain in the eastern part, warning that they could be cut off from aid if Syrian government and allied forces encircle the city and leave no way out.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are talking about very vulnerable families that have lived through years of conflict. The possibility of a siege is starting to wear very much on them,\u201d al-Awqati said.<\/p>\n

Aleppo already is facing bread shortages because the price of diesel fuel has doubled in the past two weeks as supplies from Turkey have dwindled.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome bakeries have stopped production because diesel is too expensive,\u201d said Almasri, noting that the price of bread cannot be raised except by an order of local councils, which have not adjusted them yet to the soaring cost of fuel.<\/p>\n

\u201cLife here is tied to diesel,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Many people who can leave are preparing to do so, said Bahaa Halaby, another opposition media activist. \u201cWe call them the smart ones. … They are packing their bags so that they don\u2019t get struck by the planes.\u201d<\/p>\n

But tens of thousands are likely to remain, some because they have no means to find somewhere safe to go, and others because they choose to stay.<\/p>\n

Tens of thousands of people who already have left are stuck out in the cold at the border with Turkey, which so far has only allowed a few thousand to enter.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are choosing one death over another,\u201d said Halaby, who plans to stay around Aleppo. \u201cLet us die in our land and in our homes (rather) than in the cold at the border.\u201d<\/p>\n

Those still in eastern Aleppo are starting to hoard food and other supplies.<\/p>\n

Halaby said he has seen people laying bread on their rooftops to dry it for storage.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know how we\u2019ll eat it. We haven\u2019t tried it yet,\u201d Halaby told the AP. \u201cBut if you eat it with lentils, it will fill you up. It won\u2019t leave you content, but it will fill you up.\u201d<\/p>\n

Almasri, who said he had stored up about 100 kilograms (about 220 pounds) of goods already, also will stay in Aleppo for now, but he added that he didn\u2019t know about the future.<\/p>\n

\u201cI did not leave when things were even tougher. I think the siege will be easier than the barrel bombs,\u201d he said. The deadly bombs, usually dropped by helicopters, cannot be precisely targeted, and a report last year by the Physicians for Human Rights said the bombardment had demolished much of eastern Aleppo, including most of the hospitals.<\/p>\n

At the moment, there are several factions of insurgents in those neighborhoods, ranging from Islamic battalions linked with the pro-Western Free Syrian Army, to al-Qaida\u2019s Syria affiliate, the Nusra Front.<\/p>\n

Activists worry that if the factions don\u2019t coordinate their defense under one leadership, government forces could choke off the enclave within two weeks to a month.<\/p>\n

The loss of Aleppo would be a devastating blow for the opposition.<\/p>\n

\u201cAleppo is the supplies warehouse for all north Syria, for revolutionaries from Hama to the Turkish border,\u201d Almasri said. \u201cAfter Homs fell to the government, Aleppo is the most important opposition city.\u201d<\/p>\n

Still, he remained hopeful the opposition could hold out against the government.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe haven\u2019t reached the end of the story yet. Some areas go, others are captured. We are used to this,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BEIRUT \u2014 As government troops close in on Aleppo, some residents are preparing to flee Syria\u2019s largest city while others are hoarding food in case of a long siege, even laying out bread on rooftops to dry it out for storage. The U.N. warned Tuesday that hundreds of thousands of people could be cut off […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[65],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-22116","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-nation-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22116","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22116"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22116\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22116"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=22116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}