UK-based opposition activists say the rebels have indeed managed to link up with their comrades in eastern Aleppo.
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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. A military source told Xinhua on condition of annoying that the Syrian army restored positions the rebels stormed earlier in the day at the Artillery College base in the southern countryside of Aleppo.
They were now fighting to take the other military academies adjoining the artillery base that are among the country’s largest.
Syrian state news agency SANA says that the rebels have not broken the siege of the city’s eastern neighborhoods.
Syrian rebels said Saturday they have broken a three-week government siege of second city Aleppo, turning the tables on Russian-backed regime forces who are now on the defensive.
Still, battles are still raging back and forth and the decisive results are yet to appear clearly.
REBEL fighters have pressed on with an intense offensive against a major military complex in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo, following gains on Friday, to try to end a siege of opposition-held areas in the city’s east.
The Syrian air force, the report specifically noted, was instrumental in isolating “with fire control the operations area in the surroundings of the military academies” to support the army’s push for “clearing the posts the terrorist groups earlier infiltrated”.
Drone footage posted by the group online showed a series of explosions on the edges of Aleppo, and columns of billowing black smoke.
Two rebel groups and a monitor said on Saturday they had broken the siege, but pro-government media outlets denied the claim and said the Syrian army was in fact regaining recently taken territory from rebels.
A coalition of rebels and jihadists surged through regime territory on Saturday to open a new route into Aleppo’s besieged eastern neighbourhoods, home to an estimated 250,000 people.
The Syrian government seized the only route into rebel-held areas in northern Aleppo last month, prompting a rebel counteroffensive from the city’s south. “The victory over Aleppo was a moment of joy and celebration for all the free people around everyone, a joy after the breaking of the siege and the break of the project of Tehran and Moscow”.
Syrian government troops, backed by Russian air power, completely encircled rebel-held neighborhoods in eastern Aleppo last month, cutting off all supply lines to those areas and leaving them with only weeks worth of food.
On Sunday, rebel forces brought seven pick-up trucks full of fruit and vegetables into eastern districts of Aleppo to be distributed to local markets, an opposition fighter said.
“It is only a matter of hours before we break the siege imposed on our brothers in Aleppo”, an Ahrar al-Sham fighter said in the video as gunfire could be heard in the background. It added that government forces targeted militants as they retreated from the area.
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He said it is “unacceptable” that civilian victims of Syria’s civil war are paying the price for the “the lack of desire for peace by the powerful”.
