Us Fears Aleppo Massacre

 

 Rebels capture a police station in Aleppo

 Rebels stock up on ammunition and homemade bombs

 Casualties of the most tragic and unnecessary kind

The bodies are beginning to line the streets of Aleppo

The US says that it fears Syrian government forces are preparing to carry out a massacre in the country's most-populous city, Aleppo. The US state department said the deployment of tanks, helicopter gunships and fixed-winged aircraft suggested such an attack was imminent.

Spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said it was a "serious escalation" in the conflict.

Syrian rebels in the city have begun stockpiling ammunition and medical supplies in preparation.
Ms Nuland said: "Our hearts are with the people of Aleppo. And again, this is another desperate attempt by a regime that is going down to try to maintain control."
But she insisted that the US would not intervene other than by providing non-lethal assistance to the rebels who have been trying to topple the regime of President Bashar al-Assad for 16 months.
"We do not believe that pouring more fuel on this fire is going to save lives," she said, adding that there had not been "the kind of groundswell call for external support" seen elsewhere.

The US has said it is supporting the opposition with communications equipment and medical supplies, Reuters reports. Speaking in Damascus, the UN's chief peacekeeper in Syria, Herve Ladsous, said there was "no plan B" beyond Joint Special Envoy Kofi Annan's peace plan.
"Syrians killing Syrians is something that should not continue," he said, defending the decision to reduce the number of peacekeepers.
"We found ourselves with too many people and not enough to do," he said.
 
In Aleppo itself, a city of two million people and the country's commercial capital, Syrian rebels have begun stockpiling ammunition. A Syrian security source was quoted by AFP news agency as saying that special forces had begun arriving on the edges of Aleppo in readiness for a "generalized counter-offensive on Friday or Saturday". A similar account has emerged from the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which talks of reinforcements arriving from the main Damascus to Aleppo road to the south. Columns of troops and tanks are also thought to be travelling from the city of Hama, and from the border posts with Turkey in Idlib province.

At least 34 people were killed in the city on Thursday, activists said, as artillery and helicopter gunships attacked rebel targets. Activist Abu Mohammad al-Halabi told Reuters that so far most of the victims had been civilians, as the rebels were moving around the city to avoid attacks.
"There is lots of internal displacement, and schools have been turned to makeshift shelters that are packed. One shell hitting a school will result in a catastrophe," he said.
Thousands of people have already left as fears grow that an intense battle looms.

It is almost inconceivable that President Assad would allow his government to lose control of the city, so it is reasonable to expect that they are going to throw everything they possibly can at the rebels and the residents of the city.  And that is what they are preparing for . They appealing for more blood supplies.  Hundreds, possibly thousands of families are leaving. Everybody is bracing themselves for an intensive campaign.  The way it has worked in other cities is that there is an intensive bombardment by artillery and mortars, and then when it starts to calm, tanks begin to roll in. This is a very congested heavily populated area, so it will be bloody.

More than 16,000 people have been killed in Syria since the start of anti-regime protests in March 2011. Repeated diplomatic attempts to stop the violence have foundered, with the UN Security Council bitterly divided. In all humanity, the big powers of the world should step in and just stop the senseless killing.