Aleppo's Deadly Stalemate

Narciso Contreras / AP

Both regime and rebels have snipers at the ready. Rebel fighters are reflected in a mirror as they watch for enemies.

Only stray cats have the courage to roam the streets in this part of Syria's largest city. As the felines freely pick their way through rubble and garbage, human beings dart from corner to corner, anxious bands of rebel fighters dashing between the bullets of regime snipers.

The neighborhood is called Bustan al-Basha and used to be the place where a lot of Aleppo's citizens would take their cars for repair. It was a mixed Christian-Sunni working-class district, bordering the Kurdish district of Sheikh Maksoud. That is in the past tense because,...

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