Fighting on the southern edges of Aleppo continued into Sunday morning, hours after rebels said they had broken a three-week government siege of the Syrian city.
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The war media arm of Lebanon’s Hezbollah, the group fighting alongside the Syrian government, conceded the opposition’s advance, adding that airstrikes leveled one of the military colleges after forces withdrew.
Hours after the announcement of the siege being lifted, the rebel coalition, which calls itself Aleppo Conquest and includes groups like Jaish al-Islam, declared al-Hamdaniya – the largest residential district in southern Aleppo – a military zone. The small gain by the terrorists came at a very high price as it’s been reported they had lost at least 600 fighters.
Rebels breached the Syrian government siege on opposition neighborhoods in the city of Aleppo, opening a corridor in the south and marking a major military breakthrough. The city sits only 40 miles (64km) from Aleppo which is the closest city of importance. The situation there has been emblematic of other parts of Syria where either government forces or rebel fighters have besieged multiple cities, cutting people off from food and medical aid.
The defeat is a crushing one for Assad’s government, which sees Aleppo as the prize in the civil war.
The opposition advance in the Ramouseh district now endangers a major highway linking the government-controlled part of Aleppo to the outside world, leaving an estimated population of 1.2 million at risk of losing a supply line.
Rebel and regime forces have fought to control the provincial capital since mid-2012, transforming the former economic powerhouse into a divided, bombed-out city.
Rebel fighters prepare their weapons in an artillery academy of Aleppo, Syria, August 6, 2016.
Syrians living in London also took to the streets to celebrate news of the end of the siege, honking their vehicle horns and carrying the version of the Syrian flag used by rebels and government opponents.
Jabhat Fatah al-Sham, formerly the al Qaeda-affiliated Nusra Front, posted pictures of rows of armoured vehicles, munitions, howitzers, rockets and trucks.
Video footage broadcast by RT television highlighted high-end heavy weaponry captured last week by government troops in Aleppo’s Bani Zaid district.
On Monday, regime troops were forced to redirect food and fuel deliveries to neighbourhoods they control using the alternative Castello Road in the north, SOHR said. We are in our trenches but there are insane air strikes of unprecedented ferociousness.
More than 700 fighters from both sides were killed in the onslaught, a lot of them rebels because of the regime’s air superiority, it said.
Al-Abdah said emergency plans were in place to work with local councils in eastern Aleppo to deliver basic services to the area, which the United Nations has warned faced a humanitarian disaster under the government siege.
Three vans of vegetables crossed into east Aleppo, Abdurrahman said, but this was a symbolic gesture and the corridor is too unsafe for civilians or significant supplies to pass.
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“The UN estimates that collectively all aid supplies in east Aleppo will only last about two more weeks”.
