Syria war: Key Aleppo rebel area captured by forces

Syrian government forces have captured a key part of eastern Aleppo, splitting rebel-held territory in two.

 

State TV said government troops were dismantling mines and explosives and continuing their advance.
A monitoring group says the rebels have now lost more than a third of the previously rebel-held areas of Aleppo.
Thousands of civilians have fled the besieged districts after a weekend of heavy fighting. Hundreds of families have been displaced within the area.


      

What are the latest developments?

                                                     

 

 

Both state TV and the UK-based monitoring group, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said that the district of Sakhour had fallen to the Syrian army.
This cuts through the middle of the previously rebel-held territory, dividing it into two.
While it is very difficult to find out exactly what is happening in besieged eastern Aleppo, several other districts appear to have fallen to the government, leaving very little, if any, of the northern part of the rebel-held enclave still under the rebels' control.
Russia's defence ministry says Syrian government troops have captured 10 neighbourhoods from rebels, and that more than 100 rebels have laid down their weapons and left the area, Associated Press reports.

 Aerial bombardment of rebel-held areas was continuing on Monday, according to the monitors.
The Syrian army and its allies launched a major offensive to retake control of Aleppo in September.

Thousands of residents of east Aleppo have fled to areas controlled by government forces and Kurdish groups since the fighting intensified on Saturday.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said as many as 10,000 residents fled to government-controlled western areas and a Kurdish-run northern district.
State media showed men, women and children being transported to government-held areas on green buses.
Kurdish groups who control the Sheikh Maqsoud area of Aleppo provided images showing people fleeing the rebel-held neighbourhoods into a Kurdish-controlled district.


A spokesman for the Syrian Kurdish PYD party told Reuters that 6,000-10,000 people had fled into the district.

A spokesman for the Syrian Kurdish PYD party told Reuters that 6,000-10,000 people had fled into the district.

Scott Craig, the spokesperson for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Syria, told the BBC that there were 250,000 people in need of assistance in eastern Aleppo, 100,000 of them children. Food supplies were gone, he said.
"The situation on the ground in eastern Aleppo is almost beyond the imagination of those of us who are not there," Mr Craig said.
Seven-year-old Bana Alabed, who has gathered thousands of Twitter followers with her tweets from Aleppo, said on Sunday that her home in the east of the city had been bombed.

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