In an audio message, Jolani said God had granted fighters “a glorious victory in the battle to break the siege of Aleppo”.
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Rebel militia initiated attacks on other government-controlled areas, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
Fighters and residents inside the besieged city, including children, recently began burning tires in an attempt to hinder aerial attacks as they launched a fierce offensive against government forces.
Government forces closed off the last route to the opposition holdout in early July, replicating siege tactics that it has employed with mixed results throughout the war.
In an audio message released Friday, Abu Mohamed al-Jolani, the head of Al-Qaeda’s former affiliate in Syria, pledged that the rebel offensive which started on Sunday would soon succeed.
On Wednesday, rebels detonated a huge bomb in a tunnel beneath a government position in the strategic Ramouseh area, a regime-held neighborhood separating eastern Aleppo from the rebel-held territory to the west.
“There are tit-for-Tat attacks in all areas across south-western Aleppo, amid dozens of Russian strikes on areas which were taken by the rebels”, Kenan, an activist based in the rebel-held Salaheddine neighbourhood of Aleppo, told dpa via Facebook.
They had managed to keep control of at least four hilltops and one small village.
The UN is trying to broker a peace deal between US-backed Syrian rebels and the government of Bashar al-Assad, supported by Putin’s Russian Federation, after a short-lived truce this year.
And pro-government website al-Masdar News said an initial rebel advance into the Ramussa district was pushed back “following a long and gruesome battle”. A “terrorist attack” on the Old City of Aleppo with “shells containing toxic gas” led to the deaths of five and suffocation of eight more civilians, the outlet quoted the city’s health director, Mohamad Hazouri, as saying.
Since then, more than a quarter of a million people have been killed and more than 10 million displaced across the war-battered country, according to the UN.
The assault began on Sunday and is meant to ease the encirclement of the opposition-held east of Aleppo city, where an estimated 250,000 residents have been under regime siege since July 17.
Eastern districts came under government siege on 17 July, sparking concerns for the estimated 250,000 people still living there.
The official said the US continues to be skeptical of Russia’s proposal last week to open three humanitarian corridors to allow civilians and rebels who drop their weapons to leave the area, and for deliveries of first aid and food.
“If Russia is serious about averting a humanitarian disaster in Aleppo it should strongly support the UN’s call for an immediate weekly 48-hour humanitarian pause to ensure safe, unimpeded and immediate humanitarian access – both for aid to get into Aleppo and for civilians to leave voluntarily”.
Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) said it was the worst week for attacks on medical facilities in the Aleppo region since the beginning of Syria’s five-year conflict.
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The UN’s statement about the conditions in Aleppo follows the suspected use of chlorine gas on the town of Saraqeb in Idlib Governorate on Monday night.
