When Syria's rebels were on the offensive in 2012, they captured the eastern half of Aleppo and the surrounding countryside. But now President Bashar Assad's troops are poised to retake all of the city that is the largest in Syria and served as the prewar financial capital.
A new military campaign is heating up as Assad, who assumed power when his father Hafez Assad died in 2000, was sworn in Wednesday for his third term as president. A rebel defeat could be a crushing blow to what is left of the country's three-year rebellion against the Syrian regime.
The renewed fighting has set off an exodus of Syrian civilians. Many have headed for nearby Turkish frontier, including the border town of Killis, a place already packed with refugees.
At the local bus station, families were squatting on blankets. The elderly guard family belongings while the children languish in the parking lot.
"They are living outside the bus station," explained translator Abeer Farhoud. "They may stay in the streets, in the gardens. How long they will stay here, no one knows."
Also unknown is the future of the more than 200,000 Syrians who remain in Aleppo, in neighborhoods held by the moderate rebels. Syrian journalist Zaina Erhaim moved to the city in 2012, when rebels took over the eastern part of the city. After a recent break in Turkey, she headed back to Aleppo this week.
"We still have shops, we still have schools for kids, we still have teenagers, life still goes on here. Many are determined not to leave," she said.
But life in rebel-held areas is interrupted almost daily by government war planes.
"You don't get used to it," said Erhaim, who says a barrel bomb fell in her neighborhood and destroyed a neighborhood market.
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