BEIRUT -- A military buildup in northern Syria, coupled with heavy fighting and mounting civilian casualties, spells the end of a cease-fire that for two months offered some relief to a war-weary country.
About 200 civilians have been killed in the past week, nearly half of them around Aleppo. There has even been shelling in Damascus, along with a car bomb -- both rarities for the capital.
The renewed violence is ushering in what could be an even more ruinous chapter in the 5-year-old conflict.
With peace talks in Geneva at a standstill, Syrians are regarding the escalating bloodshed with dread, fearing a return to full war and slow destruction.
"There are regime attempts to advance and preparations by [rebel] forces to advance in the other direction. But the truth is that both sides have no capacity to advance," said activist Ahmad al-Ahmad, who lives in opposition-held areas outside Hama. "It is attrition, except for the planes, which can target civilians."
The U.N. envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, appealed to the U.S. and Russia to intervene "at the highest level" to help revive peace talks.
De Mistura spoke to reporters early today after briefing the U.N. Security Council via videoconference about the largely stalled talks.
Lamenting the worsening violence, he said that "in the last 48 hours, we have had an average of one Syrian killed every 25 minutes, one Syrian wounded every 13 minutes. ... How can you have substantial talks when you have only news about bombing and shelling?"
He said he hoped talks could resume sometime in May but suggested it would first require a reduction in fighting.
But without promises to continue honoring a cease-fire, Aleppo is likely to be the focus of the next phase of the war, with both sides preparing for a major battle, according to senior rebel leaders and opposition activists.
Government forces have been mobilizing soldiers, equipment and ammunition in preparation for a military action in Aleppo, said Maj. Jamil Saleh, leader of Tajammu Alezzah, a Free Syrian Army faction that has received U.S.-delivered TOW anti-tank missiles.
He said his group, which operates primarily in Hama and Latakia, has sent troops to Aleppo to help the rebels resist government advances. He described the airstrikes and artillery shelling in the former commercial capital for the past week as "preparatory" work for a major campaign.
Opposition activists also said a substantial redeployment of personnel has taken place recently, as contingents of the Syrian army and allied militias have moved from Palmyra to the vicinity of Aleppo.
"The cease-fire was a cover, because the regime never committed to it since the start of the cease-fire," Saleh said in a telephone interview from Syria.
Nazeer al-Khatib, an activist who lives on the outskirts of Aleppo, said the city is being choked off by fighting. Government and allied forces are moving in on the main highway to rebel-held areas, blocking the only access to the rest of the country, he said.
Aleppo residents already are moving out of Syria's largest city to rural areas to evade violence, but also out of fear of getting trapped as food supplies run low and prices rise.
The city was the focus of government efforts that succeeded in almost choking off rebels holed up in some neighborhoods before the U.S. and Russia engineered the cease-fire on Feb. 27.
The truce held surprisingly well for weeks, underlining the exhaustion on all sides. Formally called a "cessation of hostilities," it was never meant to be complete because it excluded extremists such as the Islamic State extremist group and its rival al-Qaida branch, the Nusra Front.
The presence of Nusra in almost every contested area has allowed the Syrian army and its Russian allies to target opposition-held areas while also claiming not to have technically violated the cease-fire.
Particularly around Aleppo, Nusra and opposition fighters "are not geographically distinct or delineated on the battlefield. It's not possible to physically disaggregate them," said Chris Kozak, who monitors their movements at the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War. Sometimes they fight together; other times they fight against each other.
Russia and [Syrian President Bashar] Assad "paint with a very broad brush," Kozak said. "If a group is working tactically with Jabhat al-Nusra, or is colocated with them, then that group is Jabhat al-Nusra."
For its part, he said, "Nusra wants the cease-fire to collapse. ... They pitch the case to other groups that the regime is still shelling and striking them and violating the cease-fire all over" and then offer to help them retaliate.
But U.S. intelligence assessments, while acknowledging degrees of overlap, are that nothing has changed in Nusra's positioning outside Aleppo, Syria's largest city. Assad and his backers are simply using the claim as an excuse to encircle the city and cut off rebel supply lines to the Turkish border.
Any move to cut off Aleppo completely and end resistance in the city is likely to be a costly and extended affair, resulting in mass casualties and more refugees fleeing the country. There is talk that Saudi Arabia and Turkey, key backers of the rebels, may renew weapons shipments as the peace talks flounder.
Firas Abi Ali, principal analyst at IHS Country Risk, said an offensive on Aleppo also risks a reunification of the Syrian opposition around groups such as Nusra. He said it also increases the likelihood of cooperation between the Nusra Front and the Islamic State to capture towns south of Aleppo that are crucial to supplying government forces.
In an interview Friday with The New York Times, Secretary of State John Kerry acknowledged that separating the forces on the ground "has proven harder ... than we thought."
But Kerry responded testily to suggestions that the administration was giving the Russians a free pass. "We are not going to sit there and let [Russian President Vladimir Putin] do his thing supporting the regime and hammer at the opposition and say 'This is working,'" he said. "Obviously, we're not stupid about it."
Talks conclude
The ground movements suggest that forces loyal to Assad, which have been resurgent thanks to unwavering Russian and Iranian support, are likely to try to win back Aleppo.
Russia's six-month air campaign allowed Assad's forces to advance in key areas against the rebels, such as taking the ancient city of Palmyra from Islamic State militants.
With Washington caught up in a presidential election, the U.S. is inclined to pay even less attention to Syria, and its focus is squarely on the war with the Islamic State, which has a foothold in Iraq, too. This week, President Barack Obama said an additional 250 military personnel would be deployed to Syria to train and advise local units to eventually dislodge the extremist group from its declared capital, Raqqa.
Some Defense Department and intelligence officials believe Russia and Syria are clearly violating the cease-fire and provoking the opposition into doing the same.
Despite White House insistence that the fight against the Islamic State cannot be won without resolving the civil war, they argue, administration support for the opposition is a low priority.
Other senior administration officials, speaking on condition of anonymity about the sensitive issue, said the situation on the ground is murky and there is no clear path. In any case, they argue, publicly shaming Russia at this point would achieve little.
The opposition backed out of the Geneva talks last week, saying the government had repeatedly violated the cease-fire. U.N. envoy Staffan de Mistura met with the Syrian government delegation Tuesday, and the latest round of talks was due to conclude Wednesday.
Rami Abdurrahman, director of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which closely monitors the conflict, said he believes the cease-fire has collapsed in all parts of Syria. He predicted the conflict will continue as a "war of attrition," with no real winner.
"There will either be a political solution for Syria, or the destruction of what remains," he said.
Information for this article was contributed by Zeina Karam, Sarah El Deeb, Philip Issa, and Jamey Keaten and Maeva Bambuck of The Associated Press and by Karen DeYoung of The Washington Post.
A Section on 04/28/2016