Syria conflict: Troops 'mass before Aleppo battle'
Source: BBC
Syrian rebels in Aleppo have begun stockpiling ammunition and medical supplies as government forces prepare outside the city for a major battle.
Artillery and helicopter gunships have resumed attacking rebel targets and 14 people have been killed, activists say.
Troops and tanks are said to be ringing the city and reinforcements are reportedly on their way to join them.
In Damascus, activists said the army had pounded the capital's last rebel-held areas and 20 civilians had died.
Read more: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-18994124
dimbear
(6,271 posts)A little more gentlemanly.
Adsos Letter
(19,459 posts)Large formations, need for room to maneuver, etc.
Siege warfare, practiced since ancient times, didn't normally spare civilian populations.
dimbear
(6,271 posts)most of the cities were still OK. Compare WWII.
My point is these current conflicts are being fought in an especially destructive way so that most casualties are civilians. Not cricket.
Posteritatis
(18,807 posts)Continuous-front wars tend to do that after a few years.
They certainly weren't meeting out in the open out of some chivalric sense or the like. The lines in the west more or less froze in place because of the weapons of the time, and the east was more open because the population density was so much lower.
Odin2005
(53,521 posts)Some parts of Germany lost half their population during the Thirty-Years War because of mercenary armies ravaging the countryside.
The kind of warfare you are thinking of is that of the professional armies of the 1700s before the French Revolution.