Intermingled among 3 million civilians under siege in the Syrian government's assault on the last opposition stronghold are tens of thousands of al-Qaida-linked fighters and other militants who came from around the world to take part in the country's civil war.
Like the civilians they terrorized for years, they are trapped in an ever-shrinking territory under constant bombardment by the Russian-backed offensive by the government of President Bashar Assad.
The militants are a mix of home-grown fighters and the foreign jihadis who began converging to
Syria after the 2011 uprising against Assad turned into an armed insurgency.