LIVE BLOG: Siege on Aleppo

Turkish authorities have issued orders for residents in the town of Karkamis to be evacuated after a third artillery shell fell onto the Turkish border town of Killis earlier today. 

The town of Karkamis is located right across the town of Jarablus in Syria. Karkamis has faced heavy shelling from the Islamic State (IS) group as it fights to take control of further territory.

Heavy troop movement is being reported in the area. Earlier today Turkish FM Mevlut Cavusoglu said Turkey would provide every kind of support in the fight for Jarablus. Jarablus remains one of the last places bordering Turkey still in IS hands

MEE contributor Jonathan Steele in Tehran was able to speak to Iranian fighters who had gone to fight in Syria to support Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. 

Sayed Mohammad Hosseini, who claimed to be a sniper serving just out of Aleppo, said he was home for a month’s leave. 

Hosseini said he had served in Syria for 18 months in Syria but saw no imminent breakthrough. The chances of pro-government forces recapturing the whole city were “Fifty-fifty”. 

“I think the war will go on a long time," he told Middle East Eye. 

For the full report click here 

Russian air strikes have killed more Syrian civilians than Islamic State in about a third of the time, the Syrian Network for Human Rights (@snhr), an independent NGO monitoring the Syrian civil war, said. 

Airstrikes orchestrated by Moscow have killed at least 2,704 people since Russia entered the conflict on the side of embattled President Bashar al-Assad last September. Islamic State has caused 2,686 civilian deaths, the group reported. 

You can read the full report here: Russian Forces Surpass ISIS in Killing Syrian Civilians

Up to 25 people have reportedly been killed in an air strike on the southern Aleppo suburb of Hay-al-Sukkar, local activists have said. 

Casualty estimates vary, with Aleppo media centre, a local monitor, reporting that 13 people were killed in Hay-al-Sukkar but Al Jazeera Arabic reporting that at least 25 people have been killed. Al Jazeera said that Russian planes carried out the strike, although Moscow denies targeting civilian areas.  

News comes as renewed calls have been made for a humanitarian corridor to be established to allow humanitarian and aid supplies to enter the city. 

Chinese state media on Tuesday claimed that the images of Syrian boy Omran Daqneesh, may have been doctored in order to use as part of a “propaganda war”.

State broadcaster China Central Television (CCTV) ran a report titled “Posed picture? Exaggeration? The video is suspected of being a fake,” during which a voiceover said that “critics have suggested that [the video] is part of a propaganda war, aimed at creating a humanitarian excuse for Western countries to become involved in Syria”.

“It may sound like a group organised by the Syrians, actually, it is led by an organisation called Crisis Rescue, whose founder and leading official is a UK military official,” the report said.

It added that it was deeply suspicious that instead of helping the 5-year-old who was photographed sitting dazed and bloodied in an Aleppo hospital, people chose to take photos. 

A top US military commander has warned the forces of President Basahr al-Assad that “we will defend ourselves” after Syrian planes and artillery launched operations in an area where American special forces are located, fighting alongside largely Kurdish militias. 

The US dispatched a small number of special forces troops to Syria to assist Kurdish Peshmerga in the fight against Islamic State. Yet last Thursday, two Syrian Su-24 ground-attack planes targeted an area close to where they are based.

“We’ve informed the Russians where we’re at … [they] tell us they’ve informed the Syrians, and I’d just say that we will defend ourselves if we feel threatened,” Mr Townsend told CNN.

(Source: The Independent)

Rebels in Aleppo claim that pro-government air strikes killed seven members of the same family, six of them children, on Saturday morning as pressure grows for a ceasefire in the city.

The local rebel co-ordination committee said the strike, allegedly carried out using a barrel bomb, killed the wife and six children of local media activist Ali Abu al-Jawd when his house in the al-Jaloum district of the Old City was hit on Saturday morning.

Jawd was reportedly not in the house when it was hit.

Monitoring group says that 333 people have been killed in Aleppo in the past three weeks of fighting.

Read more here

Ahrar al-Sham official spokesperson, Abu Yusuf al-Muhajir, says mergers between key military opposition factions coming soon:

A video reportedly shot in Aleppo and circulated by activists over the weekend captures the moment when a nearby blast cuts short a nursery rhyme sung by a young girl for her parents.

After the initial impact of the blast - which rebels claim was caused by a barrel bomb dropped by government forces - the girl's mother can be heard screaming "We're OK".