GENEVA: People stuck in war-ravaged Aleppo do not have the luxury of refusing help from jihadists, a high-level member of Syria’s main opposition said, lashing out at international “inaction” in breaking the siege.
Damascus and its Russian ally have used the presence of fighters with former Al-Qaeda affiliate Fateh al-Sham Front — previously called Al-Nusra Front — to justify their offensive on rebel-held eastern Aleppo.
The top UN envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, has also called on the fighters to leave the city to help enable aid to reach the estimated 250,000 civilians living under siege.
But Khaled Khoja, a top negotiator with the High Negotiations Committee (HNC) opposition umbrella group, insisted that trapped and desperate residents and the armed rebels trying to defend them had been left with no option but to accept help from the Islamist fighters.
“The inaction of the international community in terms of breaking the siege of Aleppo allowed al-Nusra to intervene in this battle,” he told AFP in Geneva late Monday.
“You cannot ask the people who are suffering inside Aleppo because of the siege to refuse the help from anyone,” he said.
His comments came after opposition factions allied with jihadists launched a major assault on Friday, backed by car bombs and salvos of rockets, to end the regime’s three-month encirclement of the city’s eastern districts.
He said there were only around 300 Nusra fighters in eastern Aleppo out of around 20,000 rebels — numbers that differ wildly from a UN estimate of around 8,000 rebels in the besieged part of the city, including some 900 who belong to Fateh al-Sham.
