The power-struggle for Aleppo has largely been locked in a stalemate for many months, but with the loss of Ramousah, the regime has had its main supply route from Damascus cut off, which could see regime-held inner-city parts of western Aleppo come under siege.
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The Syrian army recaptured military positions the rebels had stormed earlier on Saturday in northern Syria, according to pan-Arab Al-Mayadeen TV and a military source.
Steadfast regime ally Moscow has been providing air support for forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad since September 2015.
Aleppo governor Mohammad Olabi said at least 10 fuel tankers were able to reach the government side of the city.
In reversing Syrian regime gains, the rebel alliance (or Army of Conquest) opened a new route into Aleppo’s eastern neighborhoods, home to an estimated 250,000 people.
Aid agencies spoken to by CNN said they had humanitarian aid standing by and ready to be delivered to the city, but were waiting until the route was secured.
Those trapped inside the besieged part of the city – which includes up to 90,000 of whom are children, according to the World Health Organization – face a humanitarian crisis, with acute shortages of food and medicine, the United Nations has said. “I hope today will be the last day of the siege”. The Castillo road remains under government control but activists say it regularly comes under fire.
According to a report by the Syrian Center for Policy Research, the conflict has claimed the lives of over 470,000 people, injured 1.9 million others, and displaced almost half of the country’s pre-war population of about 23 million within or beyond its borders.
Fighting for Syria’s former economic powerhouse is intensifying after an opposition advance at the weekend broke through a three-week government siege of the city’s rebel-held east, dealing a major setback to regime troops.
More than 290,000 people – including over 84,000 civilians – have been killed since Syria’s conflict erupted in March 2011, the Observatory said in a new toll Monday.
That rebel advance severed the primary government supply corridor running into the city from the south, and raised the prospect that government-held western Aleppo might in turn become besieged by the insurgents.
Jabhat Fatah al-Sham, formerly the al Qaeda-affiliated Nusra Front, posted pictures of rows of armoured vehicles, munitions, howitzers, rockets and trucks.
In doing so, the rebels could reverse the situation in Syria’s largest city.
Al Mayadeen TV channel has circulated a communique of the Jaish al-Fatah group that announced “the beginning of a battle for liberating the entire Aleppo”.
He also called on Syrian Army soldiers to defect to the rebels.
Over five years of war in Syria have failed to break the deadlock between the regime and rebels groups, despite numerous attempts to implement ceasefires and establish dialogue.
It said a military operation by Syria’s armed forces was “imminent… and inevitable”.
“Very clearly. what’s happening there is a war crime by all means”, he said.
Phosphorus bombs, which can cause serious chemical burns, are controversial but not banned by any treaty.
Elsewhere in Aleppo province, US-backed militias have almost captured from ISIS the city of Manbij, some 50 miles (80 kilometers) northeast of Aleppo.
Alliance of agitator and jihadists Said, it will double the number of fighter for the next battle.
The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), an alliance of Kurdish and Arab militias, has taken about 90% of the strategic city from the Sunni terror group, an SDF spokesman, Sherfan Darwish, told CNN Sunday.
Saturday marked a breakthrough for the rebel fighters as they were able to push northeast into the district of Romasa and take control of key military facilities.
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The city has proven instrumental in allowing ISIS to smuggle weapons and foreign fighters in and out of its so-called caliphate.
