Faced with almost certain defeat in the city of Aleppo, Syrian rebel groups have promised to continue their war by adopting the guerrilla tactics of assassinations, armed raids and roadside bombs.
The four-year battle for control of Aleppo, Syria's largest city, is likely to end in the next few weeks as Syrian regime forces either advance into the remaining opposition neighbourhoods or rebel areas are forced to surrender as they run completely out of food and medicine. Regime forces have now captured more than 60 per cent of rebel-held east Aleppo.
But rebel leaders say that the loss of territory will lead their forces to carry out more traditional insurgent operations against Bashar al-Assad's troops as the regime tries to reassert full control over Aleppo for the first time since 2012.
"We didn't rebel to take or lose a neighbourhood, or a village, or a city. This is a total revolution against Bashar al-Assad, his regime, his security forces, his corrupted elite," said Bassam Hijji, a spokesman for the Nour al-Din al-Zenki rebel group in Aleppo. "We'll use all the forms of resistance: guerrilla fighting, assassinations, explosions."
While the fall of Aleppo was never expected to bring the six-year Syrian war to a decisive end, the defiance of rebel groups indicates it is unlikely to even bring a halt to fighting around the city. Rebel forces control the countryside to the west of Aleppo and regularly shell the regime-controlled west of the city, often killing civilians. That shelling will likely continue but rebels said if they are driven from their east Aleppo neighbourhoods they will also look to mount raids against regime forces inside the city and try to attack supply lines outside it.
