Mick Hartley

Well, what did we expect?

Syrian pro-government forces have been entering homes in eastern Aleppo and killing those inside, including women and children, the UN says.

Or read the desperate "final messages" from the people of Aleppo as Assad's troops move in to finish the job. But of course these people are all terrorists….aren't they??

More detail here:

Amid celebratory gunfire and cheers from Assad loyalists, foreign militias under Iranian command and troops loyal to the regime on Monday captured about 90 percent of the opposition-held areas of eastern Aleppo.

The last hope of the besieged rebels, most of whom seem to have withdrawn in the face of certain defeat, had been to receive reinforcements or resupplies from their counterparts in the southern and western suburbs. That option has now been foreclosed upon as these routes are completely interdicted by the regime.

The triumphal takeover of the citadel of the Syrian revolution followed a day of intense bombing of houses and apartment buildings, destroying so many that it was impossible to determine the death toll. The neighborhoods of Bustan al-Qasr, al-Kallasa, al-Farod and al-Salhin in the Old City, as well as Sheikh Saed, in the southern district, are all now under regime control.

The Syrian Civil Defense, or White Helmets, an internationally renowned team of first responders, said more than 90 bodies of people presumed to be still alive are under debris and that its volunteer staff reported they could hear the voices of children trapped in the rubbles of their houses.

A member of the group in Aleppo told al-Arabiya TV on Monday night that men, women, and children were huddling and crying in the streets and at the gates of empty buildings in the few neighborhoods that remained in the hands of the opposition. He described the situation as hopeless, because precision munitions and indiscriminate barrel bombs had destroyed the city’s medical facilities, ambulances, and fuel supply.

Unconfirmed reports, circulated by opposition media, suggest that mass atrocities have already begun, such as the summary executions of 17 in al-Kalaseh neighborhood, 22 in Bostan al-Kasrand, and the immolation of four women and nine children on al-Firdous Street.

There was a left once that would have cared about this. No more, though. "Not in our name."

Update: the battle for Aleppo is now over – families in Aleppo "waiting for death".

Update 2: The rape of Aleppo is a cause for fury, not sorrow…

[W]hat none of us can or should accept is the way in which so many in the West have blinded themselves, wilfully and deliberately, to the evil of Assad’s crimes – and, by extension, of Vladimir Putin’s support for him.

This morning, for example, the Morning Star newspaper hailed the “final liberation” of Aleppo. This is the newspaper for which Jeremy Corbyn was a longstanding columnist, with which he shares every fragment of his ideological DNA….

It is this constituency which has, successfully, provided cover for Assad and Putin as they go about their grisly work – has helped to undermine every Western attempt to rein in the bloodshed and violence and killing, or at the very least to find alternatives to the slaughterers in Damascus and Raqqa.