Jihadists on the frontline in Aleppo

MARK COLVIN: One of the worst places to be in the world right now is the Syrian city of Aleppo.

Inland in the north west of the country, it's the latest hotspot in the country's civil war, and the fighting there has been absolutely ferocious.

It's an equally tough town to report from. This morning came the news that a Japanese journalist had been killed covering the fighting in Aleppo.

Three more are missing - one Turkish, one believed to be Lebanese, and one a man whose nationality's not known but who works for a US media outlet.

The Middle East correspondent of The Guardian, Martin Chulov, has just emerged from Aleppo after five days with no phone or internet connection.

He spoke from me from the north of the city a short while ago.

MARTIN CHULOV: Well, the grinding misery just seems to pile on. The artillery barrage, the air-strikes - especially in the south-west of the city - are particularly intense. So is the fighting there.

We did see yesterday, for the first time in this 18 month conflict that I've seen it, a number of foreign jihadis had arrived in Aleppo at the frontlines. They were standing nearby ready to enter, they were very well armed, they didn't want to know us. The only questions that we got in replies to greetings to them were, "Are you Muslims?"

And so they were heading deep into the frontlines, they were being, I guess nervously welcomed by the Syrian rebels there who knew that the fact that they are brave and determined fighters but they also propose a potential problem in this dynamic in that they are looking to run their own race, they aren't really receptive to Syrian rebel leadership and this is something that will play out in the next week or so - how will the foreign jihadi contribution change the dynamic of the frontline fighting in Aleppo?

MARK COLVIN: What do they look like? Do they have long beards, for instance, are there any clues as to whether they've come from Saudi Arabia or any other place?

MARTIN CHULOV: They were open with the rebels about where they've come from; they were from everywhere, they were Pakistanis, there were Saudis, there were guys from Senegal, they were Uzbekistanis, Chechens and an Algerian that we saw as well.

Dressed in I guess what you would say would be the standard battle attire for some of these jihadists that are black robes, turbans, vests to carry rounds of ammunition around their chest, bearded most of them and very, very Islamic, I guess cohorts.

We've seen this occur before in Iraq. We've seen it elsewhere in the Middle East as well but this is the first time I'd seen them openly appear at the frontlines in the fighting in Syria.

MARK COLVIN: To what degree do the FSA, the Free Syrian Army, the opposition forces, need the reinforcement?

MARTIN CHULOV: Yeah that's an interesting issue and they were debating that yesterday afternoon at length.

They were saying, look, help is not coming from the West, we cannot defeat these jets. The jets are very much an issue for them. They can hide from the artillery and from the tanks in the lower floors of buildings in Salaheddin and other areas that they occupy but the Syrian air force is dropping very heavy ordnances on them now. We're talking 500 pound bombs quite regularly.

They are saying that if we cannot find ways to reinforce our frontlines or find people to go there and engage in this building-to-building clashes with the regime forces and/or bring in expertise to bring down these jets, then we are not going to prevail in Aleppo.

So they are saying that help is not coming from the West, we will accept help wherever it does come from. We do understand the risk that these groups pose but if they remain under our leadership we should be able to control them.

And that's a risky calculation but it's one that's being made today, yesterday, in the coming days.

MARK COLVIN: Have the foreigners brought anti-aircraft guns or shoulder-launched ground-to-air missiles or anything like that which would help to battle against the Syrian air force?

MARTIN CHULOV: They haven't but the Qataris and the Saudis have introduced around 20 surface-to-air missile shoulder launch types as you say into the Syrian arena.

The problem is they've gone towards Idlib rather gone towards Aleppo and yesterday we went to see the rebel leaders in Aleppo who absolutely insisted that they do not have these ground-to-air shoulder launch missiles and if they did they didn't know how to use them.

So they're blazing away with 50 calibre heavy weapons from the ground and they aren't able to hit any of these planes that fly overhead and they are looking for expertise to get these things out of the skies because they pose a significant menace.

And everywhere we go we're hearing the roar of jets above us and they're targeting can be off too. They're quite often targeting police stations or other government buildings in which the FSA are hiding but they usually miss and the toll that these bombs are taking on the civilian population, certainly civilian homes is becoming quite extraordinary.

MARK COLVIN: Are there many families and children still in Aleppo?

MARTIN CHULOV: In the east of the city it's largely empty. It's an eerie, foreboding, almost menacing place. We can drive around the east without much problem but all shops are shuttered, all homes are pretty much closed.

We don't see many people on the streets at all. It is the third day of the Eid festival, to mark the end of Ramadan today, and that may account for I guess some of the people being off the streets but there's certainly no festival, there's certainly no celebratory mood in the east of the city.

As you get around to the main frontline, just near the suburb of Salaheddin, in the south-west, people are fleeing. Most people have already gone but in the adjoining suburbs there's now an exodus and you see scores, if not hundreds of families walking away from their homes carrying small plastic bags that contain their belongings and they're looking to get to Turkey or get to the hinterland of Aleppo or anywhere they can just to get away from this fighting.

MARK COLVIN: This is clearly a very important battle for both sides. The Syrian government really needs it in order to re-establish dominance. Can you see which way it's likely to go?

MARTIN CHULOV: I think that there are two factors which are going to stop the rebels from prevailing certainly at this point.

The first is the jets that we've already discussed. The second is though the residents of Aleppo are still not with the opposition. They haven't been with the rebels since they first moved into Aleppo and nothing's happened to change their minds.

The civic services have ground to a halt, festering piles of rubbish teeing up on the streets, the pervasive stench across the city, and, more importantly, there is no end in sight and without winning them it's very difficult to see how the rebels could actually prevail unless they get some large numbers of reinforcements or if they get a nice no-fly zone and neither is likely to happen in the short term.

MARK COLVIN: Martin Chulov speaking to me from just north of Aleppo.