Today the Morning Star has come under attack for its use of the term “liberation” referring to the capture of eastern Aleppo by Syrian government forces after years of occupation by insurgent groups.

As has been well documented by the Morning Star and other newspapers, the Syrian opposition is dominated by violent extremist sects, most notably Isis and al-Qaida affiliates.

In East Aleppo these include Nour el-Din el-Zinki, which beheaded a 12-year-old boy earlier this year and posted a video of it online - as reported at the time in many British papers including the Daily Mail (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3697770/US-backed-Nour-al-Din-al...).

There are no journalists in East Aleppo for the simple reason that Syrian opposition organisations cannot be trusted not to kidnap or behead reporters. As a result, many newspapers are taking at face value statements from the very groups they cannot trust with the lives of their journalists.

These groups have also been responsible for using civilians as human shields and have gunned down residents who try to flee, as has been documented by columnists at other newspapers including Robert Fisk and Patrick Cockburn of the Independent.

The capture of the eastern part of the city by government forces is preferable to its continued occupation by Islamist terrorists and is a step towards ending this terrible war, an ongoing outrage which is claiming thousands of innocent lives.