美国有线新闻 CNN 叙政府军收复阿勒颇在即 暂停打击反对派平民撤离（在线收听）

Next in the Middle East. Aleppo used to be the most populated city in the nation of Syria. A large part of it has been abandoned and destroyed by years of civil war. Rebels who've been fighting the Syrian government currently control part of Eastern Aleppo.

Syrian troops with the support of Russia's military had been battling to get Aleppo back and they've made advances against the rebels in recent weeks. Syria says its targeting terrorists there. The nation's president says recapturing Aleppo would be a significant step toward bringing Syria's five-year-old civil war to an end.

But a British intelligence leader says that Syria and Russia are trying to eliminate opposition in Aleppo at any price, and that that's created a, quote, "human tragedy".

Thousands of civilians have been trapped in eastern Aleppo. There aren't enough medical supplies to treat the wounded. Yesterday, Russia's foreign minister said Syria had suspended combat in Aleppo, so that civilians could get out. He called it the largest ever evacuation for residents of eastern Aleppo.

SUBTITLE: Why is Aleppo so important in Syria?

NICK PATON WALSH, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Aleppo is the commercial hub of Syria, symbolically unparalleled. This is which rebel forces piled in summer 2012, taking large part of it, holding back to a better equipped Syrian military, showing that they could get popular support in urban areas. It's also where so much of the gross slaughter of this war occurred, where Syrian jets or helicopters just dropping the most crude devices known as barrel bombs would repeatedly kill children, doctors, target hospitals. And if it finds itself again in Syrian government hands, that is an enormous propaganda coup for the Syrian regime itself, after its Russia and Iranian support, it now has control on pretty much of all the major population centers of Syria itself.

Secondly, the Syrian moderate forces themselves, they're moving to that city in summer of 2012 showed they could be militarily effective. But if they get kicked out, they don't really have anywhere else at this point to go. If these moderate forces move in to Idlib, they could well be being seen by the Americans particularly as too close to al Qaeda, a described terrorist group.

If east Aleppo falls, we simply don't know how many civilians could get caught in this crossfire killed, injured (INAUDIBLE). Most importantly, if it does fall as well, it marks a turning point in this civil war, one from which it can be pretty hard for those forces, for everyone used to call a Syrian revolution to recover from.