Russia has sent a battalion of military police to keep order in Aleppo, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said Friday, after the Syrian regime took full control of the ravaged city.
“We sent in a battalion of military police yesterday evening to maintain order in the liberated territories,” Shoigu told Russian President Vladimir Putin.
A Russian battalion normally numbers between 300 and 400 soldiers.
The Russian military police is a subdivision of the military that is meant to ensure order and discipline in the army.
The head of Lebanon’s Shiite movement Hezbollah said Friday the regime’s recapture of Aleppo has put an end to hopes that President Bashar Assad’s regime could be ousted. “After Aleppo, one can comfortably say that the goal of regime downfall has failed,” Hassan Nasrallah, whose party has fought alongside Assad’s forces since 2013, said in a televised address.
“Because the regime has Damascus and Aleppo — the two biggest cities in Syria — and Homs, Hama, Latakia, Tartus, Sweida... this regime is present, strong, effective, and no one in the world can ignore it,” Nasrallah said.
He described the Syrian regime’s win there as “a big victory for the side confronting terrorism.”
Opposition fighters shelled Aleppo on Friday, killing three people, state television reported, a day after insurgents finished withdrawing from their last pocket of territory in the city. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a British-based war monitor, said about 10 shells had fallen in Al-Hamdaniya district in southwest Aleppo.
Regime troops cemented their hold on Aleppo on Friday after retaking full control of the city, as residents anxious to return to their homes moved through its ruined streets.
Braving the cold, war-weary residents crossed districts that had become infamous front lines, eager to return to neighborhoods they had not seen in years.
An AFP correspondent saw civilians wrapped in coats trekking through the cold, some rolling their belongings on wheelbarrows.
“I came to check on my house, which I haven’t seen in five years,” resident Khaled Al-Masri said. “I really hope my home wasn’t badly damaged.”
On Friday morning, regime fighters moved into Ansari and Al-Mashhad, two neighborhoods they had not entered since mid-2012.
They searched for improvised explosive devices and mines, clearing buildings in anticipation of civilians returning, the Observatory said.
In Bustan Al-Qasr, a heavily damaged neighborhood near Aleppo’s famed old city, small bulldozers removed rubble from the streets.
As the army moved through Al-Myassar district, Umm Abdo, 42, said she had found her former home but it had been destroyed.
“There’s nothing left... but houses can be rebuilt,” she said.
The regime army’s statement on Thursday announced “the return of security to Aleppo after its release from terrorism and terrorists, and the departure of those who stayed there”.
Thousands of people in west Aleppo erupted in celebration at the declaration, chanting slogans in support of Assad’s regime amid blaring car horns.

Source: Arab News