Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption East Aleppo resident says he would rather die than return to government controlled Syria

Syrian government forces have captured more than a third of rebel-held territory in eastern Aleppo.

The advance, after heavy bombing from the air, is a major blow for the armed opponents of President Bashar al-Assad.

State TV said government troops were dismantling mines and explosives and continuing their advance.

Thousands of civilians have fled the besieged districts after a weekend of heavy fighting. Hundreds of families have been displaced.

What are the latest developments?

Rebel fighters have been driven out of more neighbourhoods of their long-held enclave in eastern Aleppo, as Syrian government forces continue to advance.

After further fighting on Monday, the rebels are reported to have lost all of the northern neighbourhoods they controlled before the weekend, leaving them with under two-thirds of the territory they had in the city.

Two rebel officials told Reuters their forces had withdrawn to a more defendable front line after government advances risked splitting the rebel-held area in two.

Syrian government troops now control the section of east Aleppo north of the Sakhour highway, according to monitors.

Russia's defence ministry says Syrian government troops have captured 12 districts, or 40% of the territory, from the rebels.

It says that more than 100 rebels have laid down their arms and left the city.

Aerial bombardment of rebel-held areas was continuing on Monday, according to the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

The Syrian army and its allies launched a major offensive to retake control of Aleppo in September.

What has happened to residents?

Image copyright The Rumaf via AP Image caption This woman and her young child were among those fleeing to the Sheikh Maqsoud area

Thousands of residents of east Aleppo have fled to areas controlled by government forces and Kurdish groups since the fighting intensified on Saturday.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said as many as 10,000 residents fled to government-controlled western areas and a Kurdish-run northern district.

State media showed men, women and children being transported to government-held areas on green buses.

Kurdish groups who control the Sheikh Maqsoud area of Aleppo provided images showing people fleeing the rebel-held neighbourhoods into a Kurdish-controlled district.

Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption UNHCR spokesperson describes on Radio 4's Today the severity of the humanitarian crisis in Aleppo

A spokesman for the Syrian Kurdish PYD party told Reuters that 6,000-10,000 people had fled into the district.

Scott Craig, the spokesperson for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Syria, told the BBC that there were 250,000 people in need of assistance in eastern Aleppo, 100,000 of them children. Food supplies were gone, he said.

"The situation on the ground in eastern Aleppo is almost beyond the imagination of those of us who are not there," Mr Craig said.

Warning of a humanitarian disaster, a volunteer rescue service known as the White Helmets said it had run out of fuel reserves needed to reach people caught in the onslaught.

On Sunday, seven-year-old Bana Alabed, who has gathered thousands of Twitter followers with her tweets from Aleppo, said her home in the east of the city had been bombed.

Image copyright @AlabedBana

On Monday morning, her account tweeted:

"Under heavy bombardments now. In between death and life now, please keep praying for us."

Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Meet Bana Alabed, the seven-year-old girl who has been tweeting from war-torn Aleppo

Last week the United Nations' humanitarian chief, Stephen O'Brien, said that hundreds of civilians had been killed or injured since the bombardment of eastern Aleppo resumed six days earlier.

He also highlighted deaths and injuries resulting from mortar and rocket attacks from rebel-held areas into western Aleppo.

Why has this happened now - and why does it matter?

This advance follows two weeks of relentless aerial bombardment, as the government and its allies renewed their assault on the rebel-held portion of Aleppo.

It followed a three-week pause in the Russian and Syrian bombing of the area, which ended on 15 November.

There are no fully-functioning hospitals left in the rebel-held territory and food ran out earlier in November.

Since the start of this month's offensive, pro-government forces have conducted 2,000 airstrikes, bombing the city with some 7,000 artillery rounds as well as ballistic missiles, cluster munitions and chlorine gas, according to the White Helmets rescue group. The BBC has not been able to verify these figures.

Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Aleppo: Key battleground in Syria's civil war

UN envoy Staffan de Mistura estimated last month that there were 8,000 rebel fighters in eastern Aleppo.

Retaking the whole of Aleppo, Syria's second largest city, is a key aim of the Syrian government. The east of Aleppo has been held by rebel factions opposed to President Bashar al-Assad for the past four years.

Government forces have taken more and more territory from them since Russia intervened to back its ally, President Assad, in September 2015.

Iranian-backed militias and Russian air strikes have helped Syrian government forces to break the deadlock.

Russia says its air force is active in other parts of the country, but has not operated over Aleppo since the pause.

Analysis - by Jonathan Marcus, BBC diplomatic correspondent

The tide is clearly turning in Aleppo in favour of the Assad regime - raising serious questions about the ability of the disparate rebel groupings to maintain a significant area of control in northern Syria.

The recapture of the city would be an important symbolic achievement for President Assad - underlining the fact that despite all the calls for his departure, Russian and Iranian support has been able not just to maintain him in power, but has enabled the regime to go onto the offensive.

Indeed, external military support has been crucial. After years of gruelling attritional combat the regular Syrian army, despite new arms supplies from Moscow, is a shadow of its former self.

The battle for Aleppo has depended upon air power and a variety of pro-Iranian militias, including Hezbollah fighters on the ground.

This has cemented Iran's key role in the conflict, which may have consequences in the future. </s> Simultaneous advances by Syrian government and Kurdish-led forces into eastern Aleppo on Sunday

BEIRUT (AP) — Simultaneous advances by Syrian government and Kurdish-led forces into eastern Aleppo on Sunday set off a tide of displacement inside the divided city, with thousands of residents evacuating their premises, and threatened to cleave the opposition's enclave.

Rebel defenses collapsed as government forces pushed into the city's Sakhour neighborhood, coming within one kilometer (0.6 miles) of commanding a corridor in eastern Aleppo for the first time since rebels swept into the city in 2012, according to Syrian state media and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group.

Kurdish-led forces operating autonomously of the rebels and the government meanwhile seized the Bustan al-Basha neighborhood, allowing thousands of civilians to flee the decimated district to the predominantly Kurdish Sheikh Maqsoud, in the city's north, according to Ahmad Hiso Araj, an official with the Syrian Democratic Forces.

The government's push, backed by thousands of Shiite militia fighters from Lebanon, Iraq, and Iran, and under the occasional cover of the Russian air force, has laid waste to Aleppo's eastern neighborhoods.

An estimated quarter-million people are trapped in wretched conditions in the city's rebel-held eastern districts since the government sealed its siege of the enclave in late August. Food supplies are running perilously low, the U.N. warned Thursday, and a relentless air assault by government forces has damaged or destroyed every hospital in the area.

Residents in east Aleppo said in distressed messages on social media that thousands of people were fleeing to the city's government-controlled western neighborhoods, away from the government's merciless assault, or deeper into opposition-held eastern Aleppo.

"The situation in besieged Aleppo (is) very very bad, thousands of eastern residents are moving to the western side of the city," said Khaled Khatib, a photographer for the Syrian Civil Defense search-and-rescue group, also known as the White Helmets.

"Aleppo is going to die," he posted on Twitter.

The Britain-based Observatory, which monitors the conflict through a network of local contacts, said around 1,700 civilians had escaped to government-controlled areas and another 2,500 to Kurdish authorities.

More than 250 civilians have been killed in the government's bombardment of eastern Aleppo over past 13 days, according to the Observatory.

Locals reported thousands more were moving within the eastern neighborhoods, away from the front lines, but staying inside areas of opposition control.

"The conditions are terrifying" said 28-year-old Modar Sakho, a nurse in eastern Aleppo.

Wissam Zarqa, an English teacher in eastern Aleppo and outspoken government opponent, said some families would stay put in the face of advancing government forces.

Syrian state media reported government forces had seized the Jabal Badro neighborhood and entered Sakhour Sunday after it took control of the Masaken Hanano neighborhood Saturday.

Syrian state TV broadcast a video Saturday showing a teary reunion between a soldier and his family after nearly five years apart, according to the report. It said the family had been trapped in Masaken Hanano.

The Lebanese Al-Manar TV channel reported from the neighborhood Sunday morning, showing workers and soldiers clearing debris against a backdrop of bombed-out buildings on both sides of a wide thoroughfare. Al-Manar is operated by Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant group aligned with the Syrian government.

The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces' advance into Bustan al-Basha dealt the opposition a further blow.

Rebels and opposition figures have long accused the SDF and its predecessor groups of conspiring with the government to quash a nationwide revolt.

Araj denied there was any coordination between government and Kurdish-led forces.

"We were responding to calls from residents in Bustan al-Basha to secure the neighborhood," he said. He added the SDF had entered the area handily as rebel militants fled.

Aleppo used to be Syria's largest city and commerce capital before its neighborhoods were devastated by the country's more than five-year-long civil war.

The U.N.'s child agency warned Sunday that nearly 500,000 children were now living under siege in Syria, cut off from food and medical aid, mostly in areas under government control. That figure has doubled in less than a year.

Many are now spending their days underground, as hospitals, schools and homes remain vulnerable to aerial bombardment. "Children are being killed and injured, too afraid to go to school or even play, surviving with little food and hardly any medicine," said UNICEF Executive Director Anthony Lake. "This is no way to live — and too many are dying." Activists also reported Sunday tens of civilian casualties from a presumed government or Russian airstrike on a village outside Aleppo. The Local Coordination Committees activist network in Syria reported 15 civilians killed in a Russian airstrike on the village of Anjara, controlled by the opposition in the western Aleppo countryside, and tens of others wounded. Activists usually identify planes by their silhouettes and home base. The Observatory said the strike was accompanied by raids on other opposition-held villages in the Aleppo countryside. Meanwhile, Anadolu also reported Sunday that the Islamic State group had used chemical weapons against Turkish-backed Syrian opposition fighters in northern Syria, wounding 22. The report cited a statement by the chief of general staff's office. The report could not be immediately verified independently. Later Sunday, Turkey's emergency relief directorate, which investigated the claim, said it found no trace of chemical warfare. The military was not available for further comment. Elsewhere in Syria, Israeli aircraft struck a machine gun-mounted vehicle inside the country Sunday, killing four Islamic State-affiliated militants on board after they opened fire on a military patrol on the Israeli side of the Golan Heights, according to the Israeli military. Associated Press writer Cinar Kiper in Istanbul contributed to this report. </s> Syrian government forces and their allies captured another major eastern Aleppo neighbourhood and several smaller areas Monday, putting much of the northern part of Aleppo’s besieged rebel-held areas under government control for the first time in four years, state media reported.

Russia’s Defence Ministry said the areas captured by Syrian government troops include 10 neighbourhoods and over 3,000 buildings in the past few days. The ministry added in a statement that more than 100 rebels have laid down their arms and exited the Syrian city’s eastern suburbs.

Aleppo, Syria’s largest city and former commercial centre, has been contested since the summer of 2012 and a rebel defeat in the city would be a turning point in the five-year conflict. If Syrian forces capture all of east Aleppo, President Bashar Assad’s government will be in control of the country’s four largest cities as well as the coastal region.

The government’s push, backed by thousands of Shiite militia fighters from Lebanon, Iraq, and Iran, and under the cover of the Russian air force, has laid waste to Aleppo’s eastern neighbourhoods. Medical and food supplies have run short in recent weeks as Syrian warplanes pounded the besieged enclave, rendering all remaining functioning hospitals out of service.

Simultaneous advances by Syrian government and Kurdish-led forces on Sunday set off a tide of displacement inside the divided city, with thousands of residents evacuating their premises to safety in government and Kurdish-controlled areas of the city since Saturday.

Rebel defences swiftly collapsed as government forces pushed into the Hanano district on Saturday, the first time they had pushed this far into eastern Aleppo since 2012.

With Monday’s capture of Sakhour, the rebels are now left boxed in mostly in central and southeastern Aleppo, encircled by government territory on all sides.

Rami Abdurrahman, who heads the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said Syrian government forces have captured some 10 neighbourhoods over the past few days, putting nearly 30 per cent of Aleppo’s formerly rebel-held neighbourhoods under state control.

State TV said 3,000 people, half of them children, have fled over the past few hours. It showed men, women and children in green buses being taken to government-controlled areas.

“It is stinging cold, food is scarce and people are shaken in the streets,” Mohammad Zein Khandaqani, a member of the Medical Council in Aleppo, told The Associated Press in a voice text message from east Aleppo.

He added that some residents are taking refuge in mosques while others moved to homes of displaced people in safer areas.

He said although thousands of people have fled to government or Kurdish-controlled areas in Aleppo, many stayed because they are wanted by the state.

Ahmad Araj, senior official with the Syrian National Democratic Coalition that consists of Arab and Kurdish groups, said 8,000 people have fled to the Kurdish-control Sheikh Maqsoud district so far, calling on international aid organizations to help those who are now displaced.

The Russian Defence Ministry also said Syrian government troops had pushed the rebels from Qadisia which it described as the “key neighbourhood of eastern Aleppo.” </s> BEIRUT — Syrian government forces and their allies captured a major eastern Aleppo neighborhood and several smaller areas Monday, putting much of the northern part of Aleppo's besieged rebel-held areas under government control, state media reported.

Russia's Defense Ministry said the areas captured by Syrian government troops include 10 neighborhoods and over 3,000 buildings. The ministry said in a statement that more than 100 rebels have laid down their arms and exited the Syrian city's eastern suburbs.

Aleppo, Syria's largest city and former commercial center, has been contested since the summer of 2012 and a rebel defeat in the city would be a turning point in the five-year conflict. If Syrian forces capture all of east Aleppo, President Bashar Assad's government will be in control of the country's four largest cities as well as the coastal region.

The government's push, backed by thousands of Shiite militia fighters from Lebanon, Iraq, and Iran, and under the occasional cover of the Russian air force, has laid waste to Aleppo's eastern neighborhoods.

Rami Abdurrahman, who heads the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said Syrian government forces have captured some 10 neighborhoods over the past few days, putting nearly 30 percent of Aleppo's formerly rebel-held neighborhoods under state control.

Government forces captured the Hanano district on Saturday, the first time they had pushed this far into eastern Aleppo since 2012.

Thousands of east Aleppo residents have fled to safety in government and Kurdish-controlled areas of the city since Saturday.

State TV said 3,000 people, half of them children, have fled over the past few hours. It showed men, women and children in green buses being taken to government-controlled areas.

"It is stinging cold, food is scarce and people are shaken in the streets," Mohammad Zein Khandaqani, a member of the Medical Council in Aleppo, told The Associated Press in a voice text message from east Aleppo.

He added that some residents are taking refuge in mosques while others moved to homes of displaced people in safer areas.

He said although thousands of people have fled to government or Kurdish-controlled areas in Aleppo, many stayed because they are wanted by the state.

The Russian Defense Ministry also said Syrian government troops had pushed the rebels from Qadisia which it described as the "key neighborhood of eastern Aleppo."

Associated Press writers Sarah El Deeb in Beirut, Albert Aji in Damascus, Syria and Nataliya Vasilyeva in Moscow contributed to this report. </s> BEIRUT — Simultaneous advances by Syrian government and Kurdish-led forces into eastern Aleppo on Sunday set off a tide of displacement inside the divided city, with thousands of residents evacuating their premises, and threatened to cleave the opposition's enclave.

Rebel defenses collapsed as government forces pushed into the city's Sakhour neighborhood, coming within one kilometer (0.6 miles) of commanding a corridor in eastern Aleppo for the first time since rebels swept into the city in 2012, according to Syrian state media and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group.

Kurdish-led forces operating autonomously of the rebels and the government meanwhile seized the Bustan al-Basha neighborhood, allowing thousands of civilians to flee the decimated district to the predominantly Kurdish Sheikh Maqsoud, in the city's north, according to Ahmad Hiso Araj, an official with the Syrian Democratic Forces.

The government's push, backed by thousands of Shiite militia fighters from Lebanon, Iraq, and Iran, and under the occasional cover of the Russian air force, has laid waste to Aleppo's eastern neighborhoods.

An estimated quarter-million people are trapped in wretched conditions in the city's rebel-held eastern districts since the government sealed its siege of the enclave in late August. Food supplies are running perilously low, the U.N. warned Thursday, and a relentless air assault by government forces has damaged or destroyed every hospital in the area.

Residents in east Aleppo said in distressed messages on social media that thousands of people were fleeing to the city's government-controlled western neighborhoods, away from the government's merciless assault, or deeper into opposition-held eastern Aleppo.

"The situation in besieged Aleppo (is) very very bad, thousands of eastern residents are moving to the western side of the city," said Khaled Khatib, a photographer for the Syrian Civil Defense search-and-rescue group, also known as the White Helmets.

"Aleppo is going to die," he posted on Twitter.

The Britain-based Observatory, which monitors the conflict through a network of local contacts, said around 1,700 civilians had escaped to government-controlled areas and another 2,500 to Kurdish authorities.

More than 250 civilians have been killed in the government's bombardment of eastern Aleppo over past 13 days, according to the Observatory.

Locals reported thousands more were moving within the eastern neighborhoods, away from the front lines, but staying inside areas of opposition control.

"The conditions are terrifying" said 28-year-old Modar Sakho, a nurse in eastern Aleppo.

Wissam Zarqa, an English teacher in eastern Aleppo and outspoken government opponent, said some families would stay put in the face of advancing government forces.

Syrian state media reported government forces had seized the Jabal Badro neighborhood and entered Sakhour Sunday after it took control of the Masaken Hanano neighborhood Saturday.

Syrian state TV broadcast a video Saturday showing a teary reunion between a soldier and his family after nearly five years apart, according to the report. It said the family had been trapped in Masaken Hanano.

The Lebanese Al-Manar TV channel reported from the neighborhood Sunday morning, showing workers and soldiers clearing debris against a backdrop of bombed-out buildings on both sides of a wide thoroughfare. Al-Manar is operated by Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant group aligned with the Syrian government.

The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces' advance into Bustan al-Basha dealt the opposition a further blow.

Rebels and opposition figures have long accused the SDF and its predecessor groups of conspiring with the government to quash a nationwide revolt.

Araj denied there was any coordination between government and Kurdish-led forces.

"We were responding to calls from residents in Bustan al-Basha to secure the neighborhood," he said. He added the SDF had entered the area handily as rebel militants fled.

Aleppo used to be Syria's largest city and commerce capital before its neighborhoods were devastated by the country's more than five-year-long civil war.

The U.N.'s child agency warned Sunday that nearly 500,000 children were now living under siege in Syria, cut off from food and medical aid, mostly in areas under government control. That figure has doubled in less than a year.

Many are now spending their days underground, as hospitals, schools and homes remain vulnerable to aerial bombardment.

"Children are being killed and injured, too afraid to go to school or even play, surviving with little food and hardly any medicine," said UNICEF Executive Director Anthony Lake. "This is no way to live - and too many are dying."

Activists also reported Sunday tens of civilian casualties from a presumed government or Russian airstrike on a village outside Aleppo.

The Local Coordination Committees activist network in Syria reported 15 civilians killed in a Russian airstrike on the village of Anjara, controlled by the opposition in the western Aleppo countryside, and tens of others wounded. Activists usually identify planes by their silhouettes and home base.

The Observatory said the strike was accompanied by raids on other opposition-held villages in the Aleppo countryside.

Meanwhile, Anadolu also reported Sunday that the Islamic State group had used chemical weapons against Turkish-backed Syrian opposition fighters in northern Syria, wounding 22. The report cited a statement by the chief of general staff's office. The report could not be immediately verified independently.

Later Sunday, Turkey's emergency relief directorate, which investigated the claim, said it found no trace of chemical warfare. The military was not available for further comment.

Elsewhere in Syria, Israeli aircraft struck a machine gun-mounted vehicle inside the country Sunday, killing four Islamic State-affiliated militants on board after they opened fire on a military patrol on the Israeli side of the Golan Heights, according to the Israeli military. </s> Syria forces take third of rebel-held Aleppo, civilians flee

ALEPPO -- Government forces have retaken a third of rebel-held territory in Aleppo, forcing nearly 10,000 civilians to flee as they pressed their offensive to retake Syria's second city.

In a major breakthrough in the push to retake the whole city, regime forces captured six rebel-held districts of eastern Aleppo over the weekend, including Masaken Hanano, the biggest of those in eastern Aleppo.

On Sunday, the 13th day of the operation, they also took control of the adjacent neighbourhoods of Jabal Badra and Baadeeen and captured three others, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Inzarat, Al-Sakan al-Shaabi and Ain al-Tall have all returned to regime hands and government forces have made large forays into Sakhur and nearby Haidariya, the monitor said.

It said government forces are "in control of most of the northern part" of Aleppo.

"The rebels have lost at least 30 percent of the territory they once controlled in Aleppo," Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman said.

The regime gains came as its aircraft pounded rebel positions and amid heavy clashes between the opposition and forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad in the strategic Sakhur district.

Masaken Hanano was the first district the rebels took in the summer of 2012 in a move that divided the city into a rebel-held east and a regime-controlled west.

Around 250,000 civilians besieged for months in the east have faced serious food and fuel shortages.

The Observatory said that nearly 10,000 civilians had fled east Aleppo overnight Saturday -- at least 6,000 to the Kurdish-controlled northern district of Sheikh Maksoud, with the rest fleeing to government-held areas.

"It is the first exodus of this kind from east Aleppo since 2012," Abdel Rahman said.

Syrian state television broadcast images of a crowd of civilians including women and children gathered around green buses that it said had come to pick them up in Masaken Hanano.

One woman was shown pushing a stroller and many others carried plastic bags on their heads as bombardment was heard in the distance.

Official media said they were taken "by the army to safe areas".

Yasser al-Youssef, from the rebel group Nureddin al-Zinki, said opposition fighters were consolidating their positions in Sakhur.

"We are strengthening our positions to defend the city and residents, but the aircraft are destroying everything methodically, area by area," he said of a regime campaign of air strikes.

Sakhur lies on a stretch of just 1.5 kilometres (less than a mile) between west Aleppo and Masaken Hanano, now both regime-controlled.

If the regime takes control of Sakhur, east Aleppo would be split in two from north to south, dealing a further blow to the armed opposition.

The latest regime push comes after days of intense bombardment on the east, which has been pounded with air strikes, shelling and barrel bombs.

On Saturday, dozens of families fled Sakhur and Haidariya as regime raids and artillery killed at least 18 civilians in several districts, the Britain-based Observatory said.

At least 225 civilians, including 27 children, have been killed since the government's latest assault on east Aleppo began on November 15. </s> ALEPPO, Syria: Government forces have retaken a third of rebel-held territory in Aleppo, forcing nearly 10,000 civilians to flee as they pressed their offensive to retake Syria’s second city.

In a major breakthrough in the push to retake the whole city, regime forces captured six rebel-held districts of eastern Aleppo over the weekend, including Masaken Hanano, the biggest of those in eastern Aleppo.

On Sunday, the 13th day of the operation, they also took control of the adjacent neighborhoods of Jabal Badra and Baadeeen and captured three others, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Inzarat, Al-Sakan al-Shaabi and Ain al-Tall have all returned to regime hands and government forces have made large forays into Sakhur and nearby Haidariya, the monitor said.

It said government forces are “in control of most of the northern part” of Aleppo.

“The rebels have lost at least 30 percent of the territory they once controlled in Aleppo,” Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman said.

The regime gains came as its aircraft pounded rebel positions and amid heavy clashes between the opposition and forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad in the strategic Sakhur district.

Masaken Hanano was the first district the rebels took in the summer of 2012 in a move that divided the city into a rebel-held east and a regime-controlled west.

Around 250,000 civilians besieged for months in the east have faced serious food and fuel shortages.

The Observatory said that nearly 10,000 civilians had fled east Aleppo overnight on Saturday — at least 6,000 to the Kurdish-controlled northern district of Sheikh Maksoud, with the rest fleeing to government-held areas.

“It is the first exodus of this kind from east Aleppo since 2012,” Abdel Rahman said.

Regime sights on Sakhur

 Syrian state television broadcast images of a crowd of civilians including women and children gathered around green buses that it said had come to pick them up in Masaken Hanano.

One woman was shown pushing a stroller and many others carried plastic bags on their heads as bombardment was heard in the distance.

Official media said they were taken “by the army to safe areas.”

Yasser al-Youssef, from the rebel group Nureddin al-Zinki, said opposition fighters were consolidating their positions in Sakhur.

“We are strengthening our positions to defend the city and residents, but the aircraft are destroying everything methodically, area by area,” he said of a regime campaign of air strikes.

Sakhur lies on a stretch of just 1.5 kilometers (less than a mile) between west Aleppo and Masaken Hanano, now both regime-controlled.

If the regime takes control of Sakhur, east Aleppo would be split in two from north to south, dealing a further blow to the armed opposition.

The latest regime push comes after days of intense bombardment on the east, which has been pounded with air strikes, shelling and barrel bombs.

On Saturday, dozens of families fled Sakhur and Haidariya as regime raids and artillery killed at least 18 civilians in several districts, the Britain-based Observatory said.

At least 225 civilians, including 27 children, have been killed since the government’s latest assault on east Aleppo began on November 15.

IS chemical attack

 Rebel forces also intensified rocket attacks on western districts overnight, killing at least four civilians and wounding dozens, the Observatory said.

Such attacks have killed a total of 27 civilians since the offensive began, among them 11 children.

The United Nations has a plan to deliver aid to Aleppo and evacuate the sick and wounded, which rebel factions have approved but which Damascus has not yet agreed. Guarantees are also needed from regime ally Russia.

Once a commercial and industrial hub, Aleppo has seen some of the worst fighting in Syria’s nearly six-year war.

The conflict broke out in 2011 with the brutal repression of anti-government protests, and has since evolved into a complex war involving different factions and foreign powers.

On Sunday, the Turkish army said that 22 pro-Ankara Syrian rebels were hit by a chemical gas attack from Islamic State group jihadists in northern Syria.

The Turkish army is backing the Syrian fighters in an unprecedented cross-border operation it says is targeting both IS and the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) militia, which Ankara considers to be a “terrorist” group.

The YPG is a key component of a US-backed Arab-Kurdish alliance fighting to oust IS from its de facto Syria capital of Raqa, after the jihadist group overran large parts of Syria and Iraq in 2014.

Syria’s war has killed more than 300,000 people and displaced more than half the population. </s> Hundreds of residents of rebel-held eastern Aleppo fled shifting frontlines, sources said on Sunday, after an advance by the Syrian army and allied forces that rebels fear could split their most important urban stronghold in two.

The army and its allies took control on Saturday of the large Hanano housing district, on the northeast frontline of the besieged eastern part of Aleppo. On Sunday they said they had captured the neighbouring district, Jabal Badro.

Neither area was heavily populated but the advance, accompanied by Russian and Syrian air strikes, has raised fears among the insurgents that the northern part of east Aleppo could be cut off from the southern part. That would weaken their control over the east and bring more residents closer to frontlines.

Capturing all of Aleppo would be a major victory for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad after 5½ years of fighting that has killed hundreds of thousands of people and displaced 11 million others.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the conflict, said about 400 people travelled into government-controlled Hanano from neighbouring rebel-held districts, from where some were transferred to government-held western Aleppo.

Some are also crossing into an Aleppo district held by the Kurdish YPG militia, which has largely avoided fighting the Syrian government and has been spared air attacks. The observatory said about 30 families entered this district, Sheikh Maqsoud.

Russian news agencies, citing the defence ministry, said on Sunday more than 900 civilians, including 119 children, had left Jabal Badro in the last 24 hours.

“We left Hanano because of the bombardment from the Syrian army during their advance, and the chlorine gas,” said Muhammad, who declined to use his full name out of fear for his safety.

He was waiting with his wife, mother and three children at a minibus stop, hoping to travel on to government-held west Aleppo. He said Hanano had contained about 200-300 families, but they had come and gone throughout the war depending on the intensity of strikes.

A 13-month inquiry by the global chemical weapons watchdog and the United Nations concluded that Syrian government forces, including helicopter squadrons, were responsible for the use of chlorine barrel bombs against civilians. Syrian authorities deny having used chemical weapons in the conflict.

Aleppo, which was Syria’s biggest city before the war began in 2011, is divided between the government-held west and rebel-held east. UN officials say at least 250,000 people are under siege in the east.

There were fierce clashes in areas adjacent to Hanano, the observatory, rebel sources and Syrian state media said. Rebel sources say they are fighting back with difficulty in the face of sustained aerial bombardment.

“The revolutionary forces are reinforcing their defence lines on the edges of Hanano, steadfast in the defence of our people in Aleppo . . . But the planes have destroyed everything, stones, trees and people, in a systematic policy of destruction,” said Yasser al-Yousef, from the political office of the Nour al-Din al-Zinki rebel group.

People are also being displaced internally within east Aleppo. Hundreds are moving south within the besieged sector to avoid being trapped in the smaller northern part should the government split it in two.

“Many people are being displaced from the eastern to the western neighbourhoods of besieged Aleppo. There were about 300 families which moved, but there are families who are exhausted and the army is advancing in a very big way,” said Ibrahim Abu Laith, an official at the civil defence rescue organisation in east Aleppo.

He said the civil defence was giving aid to those displaced, but the service was coming under extreme strain because of the bombardments and displacements. It has said its supplies and equipment are running very low, with few if any medical centres left to take people for treatment. </s> People remove belongings from a damaged site after an air strike Sunday in the rebel-held besieged al-Qaterji neighbourhood of Aleppo, Syria. REUTERS/Abdalrhman Ismail

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Several thousand residents of rebel-held eastern Aleppo fled shifting frontlines, residents and a monitor said on Sunday, after a rapid advance by the Syrian army and allied forces that rebels fear could split their most important urban stronghold in two.

The army and its allies took control on Saturday of the large Hanano housing district, on the northeast frontline of the besieged eastern part of Aleppo. On Sunday they said they had captured the neighboring district, Jabal Badro.

The army later said it had taken a third district, Holok, and killed a large number of terrorists, the term it uses for its opponents. State media said troops and allied forces were also pushing ahead in nearby Bustan al Basha, Haydariya and Sakhour districts and making significant advances.

"The shelling and aerial bombing does not stop and we our neighbors decided to leave with the army approaching," said Abdullah Ansari, who fled from Haydariya to areas further south within the besieged area with his family of six.

The rapid advances in the last two days, after weeks of intense Russian and Syrian air strikes, have raised fears among the insurgents that the northern part of east Aleppo could be cut off from the southern part. That would weaken their control over the east and bring more residents closer to frontlines.

Capturing all of Aleppo would be a major victory for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad after five and a half years of fighting that has killed hundreds of thousands of people and displaced 11 million others.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the conflict, said about 400 people traveled into government-controlled Hanano from neighboring rebel-held districts, from where some were transferred to government-held western Aleppo.

State media said at least 1,500 people in rebel-held areas had fled to state controlled territory in the biggest exodus since months of heavy bombing on rebel-held areas where few civilians had left despite several corridors the army said it opened to for them and rebels who wanted to surrender.

The army had blamed rebels for holding back civilians from leaving east Aleppo, saying they were using them as human shields.

Hundreds were are also crossing into an Aleppo district held by the Kurdish YPG militia, which has largely avoided fighting the Syrian government and has been spared air attacks. Rebels said the militia had also been exploiting the army advance to grab more territory.

Russian news agencies, citing the Defense Ministry, said on Sunday more than 900 civilians, including 119 children, had left Jabal Badro in the last 24 hours.

"We left Hanano because of the bombardment from the Syrian army during their advance, and the chlorine gas," Muhammad, who declined to use his full name out of fear for his safety, told Reuters.

He was waiting with his wife, mother and three children at a minibus stop, hoping to travel on to government-held west Aleppo. He said Hanano had contained about 200-300 families, but they had come and gone throughout the war depending on the intensity of strikes.

A 13-month inquiry by the global chemical weapons watchdog and the United Nations concluded that Syrian government forces, including helicopter squadrons, were responsible for the use of chlorine barrel bombs against civilians. Syrian authorities deny having used chemical weapons in the conflict.

Aleppo, which was Syria's biggest city before the war began in 2011, is divided between the government-held west and rebel-held east. U.N. officials say at least 250,000 people are under siege in the east.

There were fierce clashes in areas adjacent to Hanano, the Observatory, rebel sources and Syrian state media said. Rebel sources say they are fighting back with difficulty in the face of sustained aerial bombardment.

"The revolutionary forces are reinforcing their defense lines on the edges of Hanano, steadfast in the defense of our people in Aleppo ... But the planes have destroyed everything, stones, trees and people, in a systematic policy of destruction," said Yasser al-Yousef, from the political office of the Nour al-Din al-Zinki rebel group.

People are also being displaced internally within east Aleppo. Hundreds are moving south within the besieged sector to avoid being trapped in the smaller northern part should the government split it in two.

"Many people are being displaced from the eastern to the western neighborhoods of besieged Aleppo. There were about 300 families which moved, but there are families who are exhausted and the army is advancing in a very big way," Ibrahim Abu Laith, an official at the civil defense rescue organization in east Aleppo, told Reuters from the city. He said the civil defense was giving aid to those displaced, but the service was coming under extreme strain because of the bombardments and displacements. It has said its supplies and equipment are running very low, with few if any medical centers left to take people for treatment.
Syrian government forces and Kurdish People's Protection Units capture more than a third of rebel-controlled eastern Aleppo.