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Syrian government delivers supplies to Aleppo via alternative route: monitors

Syrian rebels control eastern Aleppo while the pro-regime forces of President Bashar al-Assad hold western areas of the country’s largest city.

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Pro-government media outlets denied the siege had been broken and a U.S. State Department official said the situation was “too fluid” to comment.

The Observatory’s Abdel Rahman said the route into eastern districts is open only to fighters.

He said it is expected the government and allied troops will fight back, but added rebels will protect their hold on the strategic corridor which would allow for a new lifeline for the rebel-controlled part of Aleppo, in the east and north.

The offensive against the government’s Ramousah military complex, which contains a number of military colleges, began on Friday.

The Fatah Army – a coalition of rebel groups including factions of the Free Syrian Army and the former Al Qaeda-affiliate Nusra Front, now under its new name Jabhat Fatah al Sham – has announced a new offensive to liberate the entire city from regime control.

In a desperate bid to break the siege, a coalition of rebel groups overran a series of buildings in a military academy on the south-western edges of Aleppo on Saturday.

Fighting is intensifying as both sides prepare for what Rami Abdel Rahman, the head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said would be a decisive battle for the northern city.

“We are trying our best to push all these foreigners out of our land so our people live in peace and tranquility”, said Abdeh.

The hospital is in Meles, about 15 km (9 miles) from Idlib city in rebel-held Idlib province. There was no immediate comment from the Russian military. Government forces still control the cement factory and some military housing.

Washington’s United Nations envoy Samantha Power told the Security Council: “Despite the overwhelming force of the Assad regime, Russian, Iran and Hezbollah on one side, neither side will be able to win a swift or decisive victory in the battle for Aleppo”.

“The military operation to destroy terrorists and mercenaries is continuing and the Syrian army is determined to defeat the enemy on the way to Aleppo”, he said.

“The goal was breaking the siege on our people in Aleppo and cutting the reinforcements’ roads to the regime”, Mr. Ali said.

Aleppo, once Syria’s economic hub and one of the oldest cities in the Middle East, has been roughly divided between government forces in the west and rebel groups in the east since fighting there first broke out in 2012.

The rebel victory in Ramouseh, while technically ending the siege, does not mean there will be immediate relief for residents of east Aleppo.

“But regime-held western Aleppo, for example, now has to be supplied via contested “war roads” – improvised roads on which it might not be possible to sustain the swollen population of these western neighborhoods”.

Residents of both sides of the city have been living in fear of competing sieges of their neighborhoods in recent weeks.

“We see very clearly the regime forces are not able to resist”.

The spokesperson said Russian Federation might now escalate its assaults and attacks on Aleppo. The Syrian American Medical Society (SAMS) charity group said that already depleted medical facilities were targeted by strikes 15 times in July.

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Osama al-Ezz, a physician working in the Aleppo countryside, said a nominal amount of relief has reached the formerly besieged quarters, but “not enough for empty stomachs”.

Syrian gather in a street in the norther