Reports say rebels fired hundreds of rockets and missiles into government-held areas in a multi-district attack.
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Control of Aleppo, once Syria s economic powerhouse, has been divided between government and rebel forces since shortly after fighting began there in mid-2012.
A statement by the rebel groups said their goal is to liberate the city of Aleppo and ensure it is ruled by Sharia principles.
Syria’s civil war, now in its fifth year, has killed more than 220,000 people and wounded at least a million, according to the United Nations.
The state-run news agency SANA said its troops in Aleppo and its outskirts have killed dozens of “terrorists”, a term used by the regime to identify Syrian rebels.
Thursday’s attack, the most intense rebel offensive in Aleppo in three years, aimed to build on recent advances against Assad by an array of groups fighting on separate fronts, including Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group and rebels backed by his regional foes. He later said the insurgents were making headway in a part of western Aleppo that would get them closer to the heart of the city.
Activists say the attacks started early yesterday and the government responded with airstrikes and shelling that killed at least 35 militants. The Syrian war has drawn foreign fighters from across the Muslim world, including rebels from Central Asia.
Turkey, meanwhile, said that although it had intensified its presence on the border, it would not be involved in the fighting in Aleppo. Tal has witnessed reconciliation between the government and rebels but is mostly opposition-controlled.
For its part, the Syrian government claims rebels used so-called “hell cannons”, informal mortar bombs made out of cooking cylinders, in their bombardments of government-held positions.
Though for a time it appeared that Assad was on the verge of victory, the fall of northern Idlib province to another Al-Nusra Front-led coalition has newly emboldened the opposition.
“Should they succeed, they may achieve enough momentum to advance to Damascus and may force the Assad regime to contract from outlying areas, including southern, eastern, and northern Syria where the regime is also challenged”, Jennifer Cafarella an Evans Hanson Fellow at the Washington-based think-tank, wrote in a report.
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“Just when we thought things couldn’t get any worse, we are forced yet again to make yet more cuts”.
