| 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:Monday marked the passing of the deadline to resume peace talks for a political transition in Syria. The Geneva-based talks did not resume this week, nor was a cease-fire agreed to. Instead, two major players in the Syrian conflict did speak about the possibility that Syria could be partitioned before the end of the war.Just before the weekend, the head of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, John Brennan, expressed his doubts that Syria would remain one country in the future. Less than a week later, Hezbollah’s deputy leader, Sheikh Naim Qassem, voiced a similar opinion, saying that sectarian fighting in the region could lead to the partitioning of Syria and Iraq.
The battle for Aleppo, Syria’s largest city, continued this week. Residents of the now-besieged eastern part of Aleppo city have been burning tires in a desperate effort to prevent warplanes from targeting civilians and opposition fighters on the front lines.
But fighting in Aleppo showed no signs of stopping by the week’s end. On Friday, the leader of Jabhat Fatah al-Sham, Abu Mohammed al-Joulani, issued two audio statements announcing that they had entered the third stage of their operation to break the siege in eastern Aleppo and promising “victory” for his “people in Aleppo.”
Nearly 300,000 people have been stuck in the eastern part of the city since Syrian and Russian forces cut off the last rebel supply route out of the city, Castello Road. Airstrikes have been near-constant, and Syrian government forces and their Russian allies used aircraft to target six medical facilities in opposition-held areas of Aleppo within one week, according to the global nonprofit Physicians for Human Rights (PHR).
Weekly Highlights:
Aleppo’s Healthcare in Critical Condition
Amid the blame game of warring parties in Aleppo, the healthcare system in Syria’s largest city is dying a slow and excruciating death. The week ending July 23-24 was the worst for medical facilities in opposition-controlled Aleppo in the history of the conflict. In government-controlled western Aleppo, physicians are fleeing and only three hospitals remain to serve 1.5 million residents. |
