British defence chief expects Assad to recapture Aleppo

British Defence Secretary Michael Fallon said on Sunday that Syrian government forces would likely recapture the battleground city of Aleppo from rebels, as government forces pushed further into east Aleppo.

"It looks now as if sadly Aleppo will fall," Fallon told BBC television, as the Syrian army tightened its grip and air strikes pummeled the shrinking rebel enclave in the east of the besieged city.

But he refused to accept that the Russian-backed government of President Bashar al-Assad was heading for overall victory in Syria's long-running civil war.

"How can you be winning by bombing hospitals, by blocking humanitarian aid convoys?" Fallon asked.

"And you end up with a country that the regime only controls 40 percent of, and is still opposed by most of his people. That's not a victory for anybody."

He said Britain would keep appealing to Russia "to use its influence to get this civil war stopped, to help us rebuild Syria with a genuinely plural government that can appeal to all the people of Syria".

"Then we can get on with the task of dealing with Daesh," he added, using an alternative term for Islamic State.

On the issue of Russia, he warned that while "there are things we have to talk to Russia about, of course to deescalate tension" - including on NATO deployments in eastern border - "it can't be business as usual".

"That can't be treating Russia as an equal. Russia is a strategic competitor to us in the West, and we have to understand that," he said.

Syrian rebels control only a small area of Aleppo that is full of civilians and under very fierce bombardment after pro-government forces took the al-Maadi district, a Turkey-based official with the Jabha Shamiya rebel group said on Sunday. 

Rebel groups in Aleppo had received no word about US-Russia talks to resolve the crisis in Aleppo, the official said, warning that it would end "in a tragic way" without outside intervention and that they faced "death or surrender".

Thousands continue to flee

Fierce fighting and heavy bombardment have seen more than 10,000 people flee rebel-held areas of the battleground Syrian city of Aleppo since midnight.

"They fled towards government-held areas in west Aleppo and districts newly controlled by regime forces in the north and centre of the city," said Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

A resident in the city's southeast told AFP that he saw large crowds of people fleeing during the night towards government-held districts in west Aleppo.

According to the UK-based Observatory, fighting raged on several fronts between rebels and regime forces in southeast Aleppo, while government raids and artillery fire continued to pound rebel-held areas.

An AFP correspondent in west Aleppo said that heavy bombardment of the east was heard through the night, and that it was so intense that it rattled windows in western districts.

A matter of time

Fallon's statements came as Pope Francis made a heartfelt call for an end to violence in Aleppo and across war-ravaged Syria on Sunday.

"I appeal to all to choose civilisation: no to destruction, yes to peace, yes to the people of Aleppo and Syria," he said.

At least 413 civilians have been killed in east Aleppo since the 15 November start of the offensive, according to the Observatory, and 139 killed in rebel rocket fire on the city's west.

With such heavy fighting, the retaking of Aleppo by Assad's forces appears to only be a matter of time.

The loss of east Aleppo will deal the biggest blow to Syria's opposition since the start of the country's civil war in 2011.

"We're now past the point where the opposition has any hope of pulling things back," said Yezid Sayigh, a senior associate at the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut.

Assad "will have in effect broken the back of the armed opposition... and the idea that the regime can be overcome militarily will be finally put to rest."

After meetings in Paris on Saturday, Western and Arab powers called for talks between the government and opposition to end the war.

US Secretary of State John Kerry, who called the regime's bombings of Aleppo "war crimes," said the time was ripe for a return to negotiations.

Now that the rebels "are about to lose Aleppo, conceivably... I think the best thing they can do is get to the table and negotiate. Because they can still win a political settlement that honours the fight and all they've invested," Kerry said.