Aleppo siege looms as pro-Assad forces cut opposition supply lines

Hundreds of thousands of Syrians face the prospect of a brutal siege inside Aleppo, after Syrian government and Russian forces cut the last secure supply line into rebel-held areas of the city, aid and human rights groups have warned.

Up to 70,000 people have fled towards the border with Turkey, where they are cramming into already overcrowded refugee camps, hoping that Ankara will open crossings. The governor of one of the country’s most affected provinces, Kilis, said more that 35,000 had arrived in the past 48 hours.

With around half a million people at risk inside the city and sheltering in camps along the Turkish border, the assault on Aleppo risks creating one of the worst humanitarian crises of a years-long war, a major aid organisation working in the area has warned.

If government forces do set up a blockade, it would double the number of people living under siege in Syria virtually overnight.

“Today approximately 400,000 live in the non-government controlled areas, and we expect they will remain. The people able to leave would have left by now,” said Dalia al-Awqati, the director of programmes for Mercy Corps in Northern Syria, said. “There are serious concerns for all humanitarian organisations as to the possibility of a siege situation.”

The charity is second only to the United Nations in the scale of aid provided in the Aleppo area, and has been feeding more than 66,000 people in the city itself, but warned that because of recent fighting “operations in northern Syria have effectively been sliced in half.

“The main supply line from the north has just been cut. One other supply line exists but it’s very intermittent and unreliable,” Awqati said in a phone interview from her base north of the border.

The Syrian government and other parties to the war have been using siege tactics throughout the conflict, and a recent UN report estimated nearly 400,000 people were cut off from food and other supplies by armed groups, mostly by Isis or government forces.

The rapid advance by government troops has created turmoil near the border with Turkey, where the United Nations estimates that up to 20,000 new arrivals have joined 30,000 people who were living in grim tent cities near the border before the latest crisis.