The rebel supply line to Aleppo is known as the Castello road and government forces and their allies, including Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group, have been mounting repeated attacks on it. The rebels however said a fightback was underway to take back lost positions and resecure the road.
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Three civilians were killed on Saturday and 13 others injured by regime airstrikes on opposition-held areas in Syria’s northwestern Aleppo province, according to a local civil defense official.
Residents of rebel-held areas of Syria’s Aleppo on Saturday faced food and fuel shortages after a Syrian government advance cut the opposition’s last supply route into the city.
He said government forces were being aided by Iranian fighters and that reinforcements on the government side had arrived from further south.
Syrian state media said eight people had been killed in Aleppo and dozens more wounded, and buildings were brought down in the bombardments.
Reuters spoke to rebel fighters in the area, providing a sense of the situation on the ground.
Russian Federation launched air strikes in support of the Damascus regime in September, one year after the worldwide coalition bombing the Islamic State (IS) group in Iraq extended its raids to Syria. Kerry said efforts were underway to extend it.
“The goal of these attacks appears to be a campaign to sever opposition supply lines into the city through Castillo Road”. The advance on Castello Road could put around 250,000 people under siege.
More than 280,000 people have been killed in Syria since the civil war erupted in 2011.
On Wednesday, the Syrian regime’s armed forces had declared a 72-hour ceasefire to be applied across all Syrian territory.
Aleppo is seen as an important stronghold by both government and rebel forces in the ongoing civil war, which has raged for six years.
The Kremlin said on Wednesday that President Vladimir Putin and his U.S. counterpart Barack Obama had agreed to “intensify” military coordination in Syria.
Nusra Front said in a statement it had launched an attack in central Aleppo, and had made advances towards a market in a government-held area.
Aid agency Mercy Corps said the latest fighting and the nearly immediate breakdown of the announced ceasefire had further constricted access to Aleppo residents, 75,000 of whom in the east of the city rely on its assistance each month. It said the rebels were trying to regain control of the farms. A pro-Damascus TV channel said Russian warplanes, backing the government, were bombing areas north of the city, near the Castello Road.
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Ten women and two children were among those killed in Idlib, where Al-Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate Al-Nusra too operates. Syrian journalist Ahmad Primo said one of the vehicle bombs was driven by a militant from Ahrar al-Sham, another ultraconservative jihadist group fighting the government.
