Residents of Aleppo, tortured by war, struggle to survive

Outdoor play park had been hit by an airstrike, Syrian air force that fractured walls of the school. Now the children were smashing furniture, wooden desktop outside lever and bench seats, running away with what they could.

The school of al-Nadri Isam for boys was being dismantled for firewood that it contained. A sixth grader, Ahmed, clutching bundles that had been plundering one room, offered an argument to plunder its irreducible school. "I want warmth," he said.

Winter is falling on the city of Aleppo, Syria, and the stage for a bloody urban battle, now running in his sixth month, between rebels and soldiers of President Bashar al-Assad.

As temperatures drop and weakened Government artillery thunders on, Aleppo is administered by anyone and sliding into disaster. Front-line neighborhoods are rubble. Most of the city's neighborhoods have been without electricity and little water for weeks. All of Aleppo suffers from shortages of oil, food, medicines, doctors and gas.

Diseases are spreading. Parks and backyards are being REMOVED for firewood, turning streets once lined avenues bordered by trees. Months worth of rubbish is piled high, often next to bread lines where hundreds of people expecting a meager stack of loaves.

A beautiful and historical city of the Middle East is forced by scarcity and violence into a new form of bitter. Overlap of everything is a mix of fatigue and mistrust, the feelings of a population divided in multiple ways.

Aleppo's citizens scavenged and seethe. And along sectarian passions of the civil war, some residents express longing for starkly opposite visions of the future: a return of relative stability of the Assad Government or for the promises of Islamic rule.

Others see a somber hope, called the tearing part of their societies a period that someday will be remembered as the ultimate test of this ancient city.

"We left high salaries, we left our jobs, we left our rank in society," said Dr. Ammar Diar Bakerly, who directs the medical care of the city of rebels. "We have left everything to get our dignity. This is the price we have to pay, and is a good price to get our freedom from tyranny. "

Not everyone agrees with these revolutionary ideas. "We come every morning to the clinic asking for medicine, but offer no, said Mustafa Iman Johair, a house painter and the cabbie without work, who spotted a visitor and came in a fit of rage."We go to the bakery for hours, but there is no bread and kick us. "

"Before the revolution," said Mr. Mustafa, a Sunni who was no supporter of the ' Alawi Government-driven by Mr. Assad, "was much better."

Supplies dwindle, raising prices

For most of the 21 months of Syria, Aleppo, a shopping mall and Government built around the historic old town, was spared the battles engulfing the country.

That changed in July when the Syrian army or the Sunnah, as many rebels call themselves, entered Aleppo and open urban fronts.

The Government rushed into much-needed army units from elsewhere, turning to heavy weapons in a bid to retain control of a city that, if lost, would change self-assured narrative of Mr. Assad. The biggest battle of the war was still joined.

Five months later, the Government's move backfired. Even with artillery and air fire batteries support nonstop, Mr. Assad's military has ceded ground. About half of the city, the rebels move openly.

From the beginning, the population of Aleppo, the loyalty of split, was stuck between the forces. Disorganized rebel groups began a battle that had little hope of winning quickly. The Army fought back with a model of collective punishment. Foreign fighters began to drip, stalking and talking of jihad.

View the original article here