(CNN)They are places synonymous with mass slaughter.
The names alone conjure images of unspeakable cruelty, unimaginable horror and unbelievable suffering.
Turkey's Minister for EU Affairs compares the situation in eastern Aleppo to Srebrenica, when the world failed to stop the genocide in the former Yugoslavia. "Sadly, the people in Aleppo are facing a major genocide in front of the eyes of the whole world and modern institutions," Omer Celik said Thursday. The Syrian war began as peaceful pro-democracy protests that erupted as part of the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings. It escalated to a crackdown by the Syrian regime of President Bashar al-Assad. Hundreds of thousands of people have been killed, and millions displaced. The city of Aleppo was once Syria's cultural center, economic powerhouse and a bustling metropolis of more than 2 million people. Today it is a devastated war zone. Government planes bombarded the rebel-held eastern part of the city and choked off the supply of food, fuel and other necessities, essentially cutting it off from the outside world. As government forces surround the city this week, activists said anyone with links to the rebels who seized control of the enclave in 2012 was being hunted down. The United Nations said at least 82 civilians were shot in their homes and streets as government forces advanced this week. "Aleppo is being destroyed by the silence of Arabs and the entire world," is the translated quote from one of the top Twitter worldwide trends.
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Evacuations were under way Thursday, but if the regime does take control of Aleppo, it would mark a turning point in the civil war. "It took 4,000 years, hundreds of generations, to build Aleppo," Jan Egeland, special adviser to the United Nations special envoy for Syria, said Thursday. "One generation managed to tear it down in four years." "There was this feeling during the Holocaust -- if only we had known more, more could have been done to stop it," said Hudson, with the US Holocaust museum. "That assumption is completely undermined by events of last week -- we know what is happening in Aleppo and when it is happening in real time -- it is being delivered on our computers and cell phones, and that hasn't provoked any kind of response from the world."
Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2016/12/15/world/samantha-power-alepposrebrenica/index.html
Aleppo joins events that define modern evil, UN envoy says
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