WEEKLY UPDATE
October 28, 2016
Dear Readers,Welcome to the weekly Syria Deeply newsletter. We’ve rounded up the most important stories and developments about Syria and the Syrians in order to bring you valuable news and analysis. But first, here is a brief overview of what happened this week:Syrian opposition forces launched an operation on Friday to break the siege of eastern Aleppo. The counterattack, against pro-Syrian government forces who have been surrounding the area since July, began with heavy shelling on the western, regime-controlled side of Syria’s largest city.“There is a general call-up for anyone who can bear arms,” a senior official with Jabhat al-Shamiyya, an Aleppo-based rebel group, told Reuters. “The preparatory shelling started this morning.”The offensive comes after months of siege and heavy aerial bombardment by Syrian and Russian air forces on the opposition-held parts of Aleppo, and the failure of a United Nations Security Council resolution to put an end to the airstrikes.Opposition forces and civilians in the northwestern Idlib province also came under heavy Russian and Syrian aerial bombardments this week. At least 82 people have been killed in airstrikes since last week: 36 of them, including 22 children, in repeated attacks on a school district in the village of Hass on Wednesday.As Russia and Syria fight opposition forces in Aleppo and Idlib, U.S.-led coalition forces are reportedly gearing up for an operation aimed at pushing the so-called Islamic State out of its Syrian stronghold in Raqqa. U.S. defense secretary Ashton Carter and his British counterpart Michael Fallon announced on Wednesday that their operation will begin “in the next few weeks.”Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Turkish-backed Syrian rebels would also begin targeting ISIS’s stronghold in Raqqa, after it had completed operations to push militants out of the northern city of al-Bab and Syrian Kurdish forces out of the town of Manbij.Further complicating the situation in northern Syria, Syrian Kurdish YPG forces will be both fighting Turkish-backed rebels in Manbij and participating alongside U.S. and U.K. forces in the operation against ISIS in Raqqa.Weekly Highlights:

The U.N. Resolution on Aleppo Is Not About Saving Aleppans

The recent failure of the U.N. Security Council resolution on Aleppo comes as no surprise given Russia’s history of using its veto power, writes Dragana Kaurin, a refugee of the Bosnian war formerly with OCHA and UNICEF.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov speaks during a new conference,  Friday, Sept. 23, 2016 at United Nations headquarters. AP/Mary Altaffer

The Fatal Threat to All Sides of Syria’s Conflict: Part 1

In the first installment of our Q&A series on infectious diseases in Syria, medical researcher Dr. Annie Sparrow discusses Zika, TB, meningitis and other illnesses that have emerged since the conflict began, and how failure to treat these diseases will have a lasting effect on the population.
Men breath with oxygen masks inside a hospital in Aleppo, Syria, after a suspected chlorine gas attack. Aleppo Media Center via AP

My Days in Damascus: Letter to a Friend

Farah is a young woman living in Syria’s capital city, where she faces the daily struggles of trying to maintain a normal social and professional life in a country being ripped apart by war.
Flowers in a garden in the Damascus citadel. Farah

Additional Reading:

Top image: A distraught man in front of destroyed buildings after airstrikes killed over 20 people, in the northern rebel-held village of Hass, Syria, Wednesday, Oct 26, 2016.  Muaz al-Shami, Syrian Revolution Network, via AP

Author: Impunity Watch Archive