The Armenian Mirror-Spectator. ALEPPO, Syria (Combined Sources) — In the past week rebels have taken control of the majority of Aleppo, and in the ensuing unrest, the body count is rising, including an Armenian dentist, who was shot and killed, according to the local Kantsasar Armenian-language newspaper. Yervand Arslanian, 66, was killed by a sniper while he was trying to leave Aleppo. He was taken to a hospital in Hama, but could not survive his injuries.
According to the UK-based monitoring group Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), one rebel group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, had led the attack on Syria’s second largest city.
At least 277 people have been killed since the offensive started on November 30, the BBC reported.
Syrian authorities closed the Aleppo airport and all roads leading into the city on Saturday, Reuters reported, citing military sources.
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Robert Ford, who was the last US ambassador to Syria, said the attack showed that Syrian government forces are “extremely weak,” the Associated Press reported. In some cases, he said, they appear to have “almost been routed,” he said.
Video posted on a channel affiliated with the Islamist militant group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) appears to show rebel fighters in vehicles inside the city. BBC Verify has geolocated the footage to a western suburb of Aleppo.
Syria has been engulfed in an all-out civil war since 2011, with Aleppo, Syria’s second-largest city, becoming the site of a major siege lasting between 2012–2016, resulting in the Syrian regime successfully winning control of the city with Russian air support.
Help for Compatriots
Armenia’s government is not in a position to help ethnic Armenian residents of Aleppo flee the northern Syrian city following its unexpected capture by Islamist rebels, an official in Yerevan acknowledged on Monday, December 2.
Aleppo was home to a majority of an estimated 80,000 ethnic Armenians who lived in Syria before the outbreak of its bloody civil war in 2011. The once thriving community is believed to have shrunk by more than half since then.
The current number of Syrian Armenians remaining in Aleppo is not known. According to some estimates, it may be as high as 10,000.
“Currently, people are in a state of waiting, they are cautious,” Zarmig Boghigian, editor of Kantasar, told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service on Monday, December 2.
“There is approximately 12-14 hours of electricity a day,” she said, adding that most shops are still open while local schools remain closed.
In Boghigian’s words, the city has been rocked by airstrikes but there is no fighting in residential areas. One such strike, apparently carried out by Russian or Syrian government warplanes, blew out the windows of her apartment.
In Yerevan, the Office of the High Commissioner for Diaspora Affairs said, meanwhile, that evacuating Aleppo Armenians to Armenia is impossible in these circumstances.
“Right now, even [Syrian] government forces have no access to Aleppo, and the possibility of evacuation is almost non-existent,” said Hovannes Aleksanian, a spokeswoman for the Armenian government agency.
Aleksanian added that Yerevan will respond if the Armenian Embassy in Damascus and the Syrian government “see such a possibility at some point.”
Armenia also had a consulate in Aleppo until the rebel takeover. According to the Armenian Foreign Ministry, the consul, Ara Avetisian, traveled to Damascus on November 26, the day before the lightning offensive launched by the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, and was unable to return to Aleppo due to the fighting.
Just as the Turkish-backed rebels entered the city on Friday, the Armenian military evacuated a small contingent of its sappers, medics and other noncombat personnel deployed in and around Aleppo since 2019.
Non-Combat Contingent from Armenia
The Armenian military evacuated its small non-combat contingent from Aleppo late on Friday, November 29, as Islamist rebels entered the city.
“This escalation made it impossible for the Armenian humanitarian demining and medical team, which has been conducting its mission in the Aleppo region since 2019, to continue its activities,” read a statement released by the Defense Ministry in Yerevan earlier in the day.
“In light of these developments, a decision was made to temporarily suspend the team’s operations in Aleppo,” the statement said, adding that the Armenian military personnel were flown back to Armenia the previous night.
Yerevan deployed, with Russia’s support and encouragement, more than 80 demining specialists, army medics and other servicemen tasked with protecting them to the Aleppo region in 2019, prompting criticism from the United States. It did not end this “humanitarian” mission during and after the 2020 war with Azerbaijan that resulted in serious security challenges to Armenia.
Armenia was one of the few countries that did not cut ties with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime and maintained functioning diplomatic missions in Damascus and Aleppo throughout the civil war.
Upon its deployment in 2019, the Defense Ministry said that the mission would operate exclusively in regions devoid of military operations.
The ministry cited several UN General Assembly resolutions regarding Syria, a written request by Syrian authorities, and Aleppo’s Armenian community as the driving factors behind the mission.
The logistics of the mission were announced to be carried out with assistance from Russia, the Syrian regime’s biggest ally.
Russia’s then-Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu praised Armenia’s decision to send the mission, saying that Armenia was “the first to respond to our calls to help the Syrian people.”
According to Armenian officials, Ankara recruited thousands of Syrian mercenaries in Idlib and sent them to fight on Azerbaijan’s side in the Nagorno-Karabakh war that broke out in September 2020. The Armenian claims were backed by France and, implicitly, Russia.
Also, multiple reports by Western media quoted members of Islamist groups in the rebel-held province as saying in September and October 2020 that they are deploying to Azerbaijan in coordination with the Turkish government. Turkey and Azerbaijan denied the presence of any foreign mercenaries in the Azerbaijani army ranks.
Two Syrian men were captured by Karabakh Armenian forces during the fighting. An Armenian court sentenced them to life imprisonment in May 2021.
(Material from Kantsasar, Azatutyun, News.am, Armenpress and OC Media were used to compile this report.)