The capture of Handarat camp, 13 km northeast of Aleppo, came after the Syrian army and Palestinian factions destroyed the last positions of the rebels there, SANA said.
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The escalation was the clearest sign yet that efforts to restore a cease-fire that ended this week had failed, and that the Syrian government had returned to trying to stamp out the rebel movement and seize ground through military force. The truce was brokered by Russian Federation and the US.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which opposes the government and tracks the conflict from Britain, said at least 27 people had been killed in the overnight bombardment of Aleppo. “There are still many under the rubble and we continue to pull them out”, he said.
But her father, sisters and a brother all died.
Unexploded rockets were still buried in the roads in some areas, and elsewhere enormous craters around five metres deep and wide had been left by the bombing.
“Since the beginning of the crisis, Aleppo has not been subjected to such a vicious campaign”, said Mohammed Abu Jaafar, a forensics expert based in the city.
Meanwhile, medical sources in Aleppo said that hundreds of people had been killed and wounded in three days of intensified aerial bombardment of rebel-held areas of the city and rebel shelling of government-held districts. It says several of its own headquarters have been targeted.
They had been fighting to take the camp for months because it is on high ground that overlooks the rebel-held east of the city. Ambulances and the lone fire engine that serves the rebel-held districts were damaged. A second centre operated by the group was also hit.
“It is really critical. It is very, very intense”, Alhaj said.
Warplanes launched some of the heaviest airstrikes of the war on rebel areas of Aleppo on Friday, said Reuters.
He added that this could be “catastrophic” for residents who have to resort to contaminated water and will be at risk from water-borne diseases.
The air campaign was followed by an announcement late Thursday by Syria’s military command in Aleppo that it is launching new operations in rebel-held eastern quarters of the city. “The belt is getting tighter around you”. Assad and his allies seem more determined than ever to crush the almost six-year-old rebellion by force. “Aleppo will remain free of Assad, his sectarian militias and thugs”. Negotiations are underway, it says, to fix a water pumping station and get water flowing back to the city. The pro-government Addounia TV blamed the rebels for targeting the station in Bab al-Nairab, which feeds both sides of the contested city. The station said pumping from the station has ceased, but said work had begun to fix it.
But the atmosphere between the two great powers has grown frosty following a USA airstrike last weekend that killed scores of Syrian government troops – attributed by Washington to a mistake – and Monday’s attack on a Syrian Red Crescent aid convoy, which left at least 20 dead.
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Alhaj, of the Civil Defense, confirmed the government troop movements on the city’s southern edge.
