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#Aleppo

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The UN called it a “meltdown of humanity.” Just when we thought that things couldn’t get any worse in Syria, news of Aleppo falling broke. The city has long been a stronghold of rebels fighting against Bashar Al Assad’s regime. Early this week, the Syrian Army made a decisive entry into the city and ever since there have been harrowing accounts of widespread bombings and killing in the city with civilians, including women and children are being massacred. The city has a thousand years old history and was once Syria’s largest metropolis. Images of the irreparable damage wrought through the city during this war have been dominating news everywhere but this recent turn of events has shocked the world even more. Besieged citizens, children, women and men have been reaching out to the world via tweets and video messages, imploring the world to come to their aid, saying their final goodbyes to the world, as we watch war crimes take place. A fragile ceasefire brokered by Turkey and Moscow saw some evacuations take place on between this Thursday and Friday, a convoy of ambulances and school buses snaking its way through the rubble of the city. This morning, Friday, news reports are filing in of the ceasefire and evacuation efforts being halted after some groups couldn't agree to the terms of the ceasefire. This has lead to fears that fighting will ensure shortly and civilians who haven't been evacuated will once again be at risk. Around eight thousand people have been evacuated thus far, before any further operations were cancelled with no explanation. The most conservative estimates still put the number of civilians in the  area to be between 50,000 to 100,000.

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