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Syrians gain ground

Rebels withdrew from al-Shaar under heavy bombardment by pro-government forces to the Marjeh and Maadi neighbourhoods, said local media activist Mahmoud Raslan to The Associated Press. Several gunmen were killed.

The SANA state news agency said the government captured the entire neighbourhood as well as the neighbourhoods of al-Qatarji and Karm al-Dada.

The neighbourhood was home to four hospitals available to residents trapped by the government's siege of the eastern part of the city. But those hospitals, along the rest of the neighbourhood, were pulverized by the government's bombardment. Broad swaths of the city's eastern quarters are in ruins.

Rebels and pro-government forces fought street-to-street in the city's southern Saif al-Dawleh and al-Zabadiyeh neighbourhoods.

The Syrian government and its ally Russia on Tuesday issued stark warnings to rebels in besieged eastern neighbourhoods of Aleppo, with Moscow's top diplomat saying the rebels will be wiped out unless they stop fighting and leave the city.

The tough rhetoric comes a day after Russia and China blocked a draft resolution at the U.N. Security Council demanding a seven-day truce in Aleppo to evacuate the sick and wounded and to provide humanitarian aid workers time to get food and medicine into the city. Russia, a main backer of the Syrian government, is supporting the government's offensive in Aleppo and has repeatedly blocked action in the Security Council over Syria.

"Those who refuse to leave nicely will be destroyed," Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told reporters in Moscow, speaking of the Syrian rebels. "There is no other way."

In Damascus, the Foreign Ministry said in a statement carried on the state SANA news agency, that the government will not allow rebels a chance to "regroup and repeat their crimes" in the divided city — a reference to rebel shelling of Aleppo's western, government-held districts that has killed 81 civilians in the past three weeks, according to the Observatory.

The government's offensive to take eastern Aleppo killed 341 civilians over the same period and displaced tens of thousands over the past week, the Observatory and other activist groups have said. Since last Tuesday, a crushing air and ground assault has enabled Syrian President Bashar Assad's forces to recapture more than half of opposition-held eastern Aleppo.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry met with Lavrov in Rome last Friday to discuss Aleppo but there has been no evident progress on reviving the stalled Syria peace talks.



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