As thousands of civilians flee the Assad regime's advance on eastern Aleppo, rebel groups are charging that the Kurdish-led People's Protection Units (YPG) are collaborating in the offensive. The YPG and rebels aligned with the Free Syrian Army have clashed several times in Aleppo, mostly around the Kurdish-controlled Sheikh Maqsoud enclave. In recent days, as the pro-regime forces press their advance on the east, Kurdish fighters have taken over several areas abandoned by the rebels. Photos and video showing the regime flag and the yellow YPG banner raised on top of a building were circulated on social media, suggesting that the Kurdish forces and Syrian national army were in fact fighting together. The YPG, however, said the images were faked, and denied any cooperation with the Syrian army.

A group of German lawyers have filed a criminal complaint against Syrian dictator Bashar Assad on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Speaking at a press conference in Berlin on Nov. 28, attorney Mehmet Daimaguler said they were optimistic the German federal prosecutor will open a formal investigation following their complaint. German law allows prosecutions under the principle of universal jurisdiction, holding that nations can charge foreigners for grave crimes committed abroad. The lawyers cited Amnesty International reports and individual accounts by asylum-seekers in Germany in arguing overwhelming evidence of multiple atrocities committed by Assad in Aleppo between April and November. "We're experiencing genocide in Aleppo in slow motion," Daimaguler said, citing the targeted bombing of hospitals, cluster bombs on civilians and forced expulsion.

Backed by unrelenting Russian air-strikes, Syrian pro-regime forces are now making rapid advances into rebel-held eastern Aleppo. The fall of the city's Masaken Hanano district is a harsh symbolic blow, as it was the first area the rebels took in the summer of 2012. There is a mass exodus of residents ahead of the regime forces. Up to 20,000 have been displaced just over the past 72 hours, the Red Cross said Nov. 29. (BBC News, BBC News, AFP) But there is really nowhere to run. "This week I've changed locations three times," a medic in east Aleppo said via social media. "In the shelter, we had dead people who we couldn't take out because the bombardment was so intense." (Reuters; Orient Net) Regime forces are apparently continuing to use chemical weapons. The activist Aleppo Media Center tweeted disturbing photos of what it said were victims of a chlorine attack in east Aleppo.

Egypt's Court of Cassation on Nov. 22 overturned the life sentences of former president Mohamed Morsi and 16 other members of the Muslim Brotherhood. Morsi had been convicted of conspiring with the Palestinian Hamas and other foreign militant groups. The court ordered a retrial in the matter, though a new hearing date is yet to be scheduled. The court also performed the same for Brotherhood spiritual leader Mohammed Badei and fellow members accused of spying for Hamas and Iran. Last week the court had overturned Morsi's death sentence in the matter of his prison break during the Egyptian Revolution in 2011. Morsi still faces numerous other sentences including 20 years for violence against protestors and 40 years for leaking state secrets to Qatar.

Assad regime and Russian warplanes resumed their bombardment of Aleppo Nov. 15 after the "humanitarian pause" announced last month. Damascus state TV boasted of "precision weapons to target terrorist positions," of course. Activists on the ground report an assault of unprecedented intensity, with bombs falling virtually constantly. The assault had been threatened in mass text messages sent to residents of rebel-held east Aleppo by the regime, instructing them to leave within 24 hours. The campaign of targeting hospitals has resumed, and eastern Aleppo is now without a single hospital operating at full capacity, the Syrian American Medical Society reports. One of those struck this week was a children's hospital, forcing staff to evacuate babies to safety. (EA Worldview, CNN, Nov. 19; CNN, Nov. 15)

The president of the UN Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals, Theodor Meron, demanded (PDF) the release of Turkish judge Aydin Sefa Akay in an address to the UN General Assembly on Nov. 9. The General Assembly had elected Akay as a judge to the MICT in 2011. Turkish officials detained Akay in September after a failed coup against the Turkish government. Turkey's actions violated the diplomatic immunity of international judges, said Meron. In his address, Meron called for "Judge Akay's immediate release from detention and the cessation of all legal proceedings against him."

Turkey's Interior Ministry confirmed Nov. 3 that 11 lawmakers with the leftist and Kuridish-led Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) lawmakers have been detained by police in operations across the country, ostensibly as part of a terrorism investigation. Those detained include HDP co-chairs Selahattin Demirtas and Figen Yuksekdag. The arrests come as President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is seizing draconian powers in the wake of July's attempted coup. Hours after the arrests, a bomb attack outside a police station in Diyarbakir left eight dead and over 100 wounded. As in previous recent terror attacks in Turkey, authorities initially blamed the leftist Kurdish guerillas of the PKK, but it was subsequently claimed by ISIS. (Kurdish Question, Kurdish Question, Anadolu Agency)

Russian President Vladimir Putin has issued an ultimatum to the defenders of Aleppo's rebel-held east that they abandon the city by Friday Oct. 4. The rebel leaders pledge defiance, saying that promised safe passages out of besieged areas are a trap. "This is completely out of the question. We will not give up the city of Aleppo to the Russians and we won't surrender," Zakaria Malahifji, of the Fastaqim rebel group, told Reuters, denying that there are safe exit corridors. "It's not true. Civilians and fighters are not leaving. Civilians are afraid of the regime, they don't trust it. And the fighters are not surrendering." (The Guardian, Al Jazeera) A Russian military fleet is meanwhile making its way to Syria, signaling an imminent escalation in the ongoing aerial assault on Aleppo. There has been some controversy about the fleet's refueling stops along the way. While NATO member Spain has allowed Russian warships en route to Syria to resupply at its port of Ceuta before, this time international pressure led Moscow to withdraw its request for a stop there. (World Post, The Local, Spain) The Royal Navy, which monitored the fleet's passage through the English Channel, says it includes the aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov as well as three submarines (two nuclear-powered) armed with cruise missiles. (The Independent)