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.
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But little has changed for the besieged residents of rebel-held eastern Aleppo neighborhoods, who have been enduring acute shortages of food and medicine, as the fighting remains too fierce for aid to be delivered, the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and humanitarian workers operating in the area say.
“We will not rest until we raise the flag of the conquest over Aleppo’s citadel”, the coalition was quoted as saying.
Rebels have been fighting to break a government siege on rebel-held neighborhoods in the northern Syrian city, where the United Nations says 300,000 people are trapped.
Islamist rebels in Syria say they have broken through to besieged opposition-held areas in eastern Aleppo.
The U.N. says there are about 18 besieged and hard-to-reach areas, nearly all encircled by government forces.
The observatory’s Abdel Rahman said the route into eastern districts is open only to fighters.
Footage released by opposition groups showed fighters embracing as they celebrated the end of the city’s weeks-long encirclement. Taking control of Ramousah and linking up with eastern Aleppo would isolate government-held western Aleppo by cutting the southern route out toward the capital Damascus.
In September 2013, when the USA and other major Western powers appeared to be on the brink of using military force in Syria to dislodge the regime of President Bashar Al-Assad, Francis staged a special penitential liturgy in St. Peter’s Square to pray for peace, and criticized the idea of widening the conflict at nearly every turn. State news agency SANA said one girl was killed in rebel shelling of government areas near the frontline.
Celebrations … Pro-rebel civilians in Aleppo take to the streets after siege is broken Victory … Fighting between the rebels and government forces drastically intensified in the last week as rebel groups launched a final push to relieve the city.
The greatest beneficiaries of the rebel victory may be Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, formerly known as Jabhat al-Nusra (al-Nusra Front). The government and major ally Russian Federation had offered corridors for residents to leave opposition-held areas, an offer met with skepticism from the locals who viewed it as an attempt to depopulate the area.
Some rebel groups refer to the Aleppo battle as the “Ibrahim al-Youssef Offensive”, a reference to a Sunni army officer said to have led a massacre of cadets at the Artillery College in the late 1970s.
But the route remains open only to military movements, and “not a single civilian has left the eastern districts because the road is too risky and not secured”, Abdel Rahman said.
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Syria Democratic Forces (SDF) fighters walk with people that fled their homes due to clashes between Islamic State fighters and Syria Democratic Forces (SDF) towards safer parts of Manbij, in Aleppo Governorate, Syria, August 7, 2016. The militants have carried out a counter attack in this area using two explosives-laden cars, but the Syrian forces have repelled the attack destroying three tanks and three infantry fighting vehicles.
