Bombing by Russian jets targeted opposition forces in the Aleppo countryside after the regime suffered a major setback in its bid to take control of the city, with video footage released by rebels purportedly showing huge fires which they claim were caused by white phosphorus bombs.
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The group’s fighters surged through regime territory on Saturday, breaking a three-week government siege in a major setback for the regime.
In May, President Bashar al Assad likened the fight for Aleppo to the battle of Stalingrad.
Shortly before sunset Saturday, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and the Local Coordination Committees said that militants were able to reach besieged areas.
Syria’s pro-government Al-Watan newspaper also said Monday that the Syrian army and its allies had brought “necessary” military reinforcements to recover areas it withdrew from after it carried out a “redeployment in the area”.
A cessation of hostilities agreement brokered by Russian Federation and the United States brought a measure of relief to the battered Syrian city of Aleppo on May 5, 2016 but President Bashar al-Assad said he still sought a total, crushing victory over rebel forces.
Syrian government forces seized the only route into rebel-held areas of northern Aleppo in July, sparking a counter-offensive by the rebels from the city’s south.
The al-Qaida affiliate now known as the Levant Conquest Front (LCF) pushed government forces and allied fighters out of a number of military colleges, a warehouse, a bakery, a auto park and a section of a major road in the southern Ramouseh district where fighting has raged for a week. “The regime is using cluster and vacuum bombs”, said Abu al Hasanien, a senior Fatah Army commander based in Aleppo.
After days of ferocious fighting in what it has named “The Great Battle for Aleppo”, the Islamist-led rebel coalition known as Jaysh al Fateh broke through government lines in southwest Aleppo Saturday, capturing the strategic district of Ramouseh, including a government military college in the neighborhood.
Abdel Rahman told AFP on Monday that hundreds of opposition fighters had arrived in Aleppo from the surrounding province and neighbouring Idlib.
(“29-Jul-16 World View – Syria’s Al-Nusra splits with al-Qaeda, becoming Jabhat Fateh al-Sham”) Many anti-Assad groups didn’t want to be linked to al-Qaeda, and were demanding that Jabhat al-Nusra split with al-Qaeda before any coalition could be formed. The group changed its name from Al-Nusra Front last month after breaking with Al-Qaeda.
The defeat is a crushing one for Assad’s government, which sees Aleppo as the prize in the civil war. “It is however an important battle, the result of which will set the course of the conflict”, said Thomas Pierret, a Syria expert at the University of Edinburgh.
Fears grew on Sunday in the government-controlled western half of the city of food and fuel shortages as rebels attempted to surround it.
“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”.
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“Despite more than 600 Russian strikes, the regime forces were not able to hold on to their positions”, he said, adding their troops had been redeployed. A military source in Damascus denied that the city’s west had been besieged, saying “the situation is under control and the situation is not worrisome”.
