This is the situation in east-Aleppo as of Dec 4, 6PM ET. The enclosed green area, held by al-Qaeda and its allies, will soon be gone.
Map via Fabrice Balanche – bigger
The British Foreign Minister says that the foreseeable Syrian government victory in Aleppo will not be a gain at all. Bollocks. He and his colleagues have obviously given up on the case and now issue face saving laments. Syria's alliance is winning, U.S. policy is changing and the end of the war is now foreseeable. The British MI-6 propaganda operation "Bana Alabed" expired. The operation's main star was a seven year old girl in east-Aleppo who could not speak English but tweeted world politics in perfect Twitter-English even when the Internet in all Aleppo was down. It has now vanished. This is just like one of the first anti-Syrian propaganda operations, the "Gay girl in Damascus", which expired in 2011 shortly before its male U.S. operator in Scotland was exposed. What will all the media who have willfully fallen for this "Bana" nonsense now tell their viewers and readers?
Since the start of the Syrian army offense on the Takfiri held east-Aleppo some 21,000+ civilians have left towards the government held areas in the western part. Several news accounts confirm that these civilians had been held hostages by the Takfiris and had to flee under fire:
"We were under pressure by all means, psychological and financial. The gunmen were trying to prevent us from leaving until the army came," said 36-year-old Amina Rwein, who fled with her husband, seven daughters and three sons.
"We came under fire from the gunmen as we were leaving and the army hit the minaret from where the sniper was shooting, and then we crossed," she said.
About 500 fighters among those civilians gave themselves up to the Syrian army. 480 of them were locals and where led go after they pledged to end all fighting.
The remaining rebels want to stay in the city and continued fighting until the end. This sabotages plans by Secretary of State Kerry who tries to get another ceasefire in which some al-Qaeda fighters would leave but other Takfiris kept in control of east-Aleppo. Kerry was late anyway. That deal was no longer on the table. The EU has even worse ideas – it wants to bribe the Syrian government to keep some Jihadis alive and in power. What a joke! The Russian and Syrian forces will not leave any enemy fighter in the area alive or any inch of Aleppo city grounds occupied by them. Later the same will apply to all of Syria.
New controlled exits for civilians and fighters who want to leave will be set up soon. All the old exit areas in the northern parts are now completely under Syrian government control.
I doubt that there are many, if any civilians left. As my original estimated from October 15 said:
Based on the Daraya numbers and those of other sieges in Syria there are probably no more than 4-5,000 fighters and some 3-5 civilians per fighter, i.e. their immediate families, in east-Aleppo. The real total could easily be as low as 20,000.
The UN Refugees Agency and UN officials told fairy tales of some 270,000 civilians under siege in east-Aleppo. Numbers every "western" media repeated without caveats. More than 60% of the areas have been liberated. The International Red Cross went there and they were empty. Where are all those hundred-thousands civilians the UN envisioned now?
There are still daily missile attacks from the Takfiri held areas on the government held western areas and each of these is costing lives. UPDATE: According to SANA 8 people were killed and 25 wounded today when the Takfiris fired missiles into residential areas of west-Aleppo. A Russian field hospital set up over the last days to help refugees from east Aleppo came under attack from the "moderate" Takfiris. A female Russian doctor was killed, several other personal were wounded and the hospital was (pics) destroyed. /UPDATE
These attacks create urgency to drain the cauldron as soon as possible. There are several other reason, next to that urgency, why the attack on east-Aleppo proceeds much faster than expected.
Whenever the Syrian army and its allies slow down their attacks infighting keeps the Jihadists in the cauldron busy. Yesterday the al-Qaeda group Jabhat al-Nusra joined the CIA equipped Zinki group in attacks on the headquarters of some local armed groups who had control over stores filled with food and ammunition. Such moments of infighting are ideal for the attacking Syrian forces to go forward in unexpected ways.
The Syrian government forces do not proceed along the lines military professionals expected. They do not attack along main roads or obvious axes with enemy checkpoints and prepared traps but probe from every side until they find a weakness and then go through lightly defended densely build up areas to attack the checkpoint defenders from the rear. The 25,000 Syrian army fighters and the 10,000 foreign allies (4,000 from Iraq, 4,000 provided by Iran and 2,000 Hizbullah from Lebanon) have unprecedented air support from Syrian planes and helicopters. Reports of "Russian bombing" of east-Aleppo are all false and have been false for the last six weeks. Only the Syrian airforce is active in the area.
The general plan is to squeeze all the Takfiris into one small area in east-Aleppo (probably the "old city") and to then negotiate their departure to Idleb in north-west Syria. Idelb itself is already filled with infighting Jihadis of various stripes who were offered exit to it from several areas around Damascus, Homs and Hama. It will soon be a shooting alley for the Syrian and Russian air-forces. The Jihadis will flee to Turkey, which is a nightmare for Erdogan, and maybe onward from there into "western" European cities. There they will be pampered and rest until their masters call for another battle.