An alliance of anti-Assad rebels and jihadist groups dealt a major setback to the Russian-backed Syrian regime on August 5 by breaking a three-week siege on Aleppo.
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Government forces, with the help of Russian airstrikes, cut Aleppo’s rebel-held areas off in July, with about 250,000 remaining in the city.
Fatah al-Sham provided an extensive coverage of the battles though its accounts on Twitter and Telegram, showing the fighting on the ground, weapons confiscated from the regime forces and Syrian soldiers who were captured alive, as they broke through regime territory and opened a route into Aleppo’s besieged eastern neighborhoods.
The Syrian Coalition said demonstrators took to the streets celebrating the lift of the siege.
In a wide offensive Saturday, an alliance of rebel groups, including the Levant Conquest Front, formerly al-Qaeda’s branch in Syria, pushed government forces and allied fighters out of a number of military colleges, a warehouse, a bakery, a parking lot and a section of the highway in the southern Ramouseh district where fighting has raged for a week.
Pro-Syrian government news channels have mostly played down the rebel gains and say Syrian army efforts have caused rebels to withdraw from some recently-gained areas.
“There are intermittent clashes and air strikes, but to a lesser degree”, said Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman.
Users uploaded images and videos of Syrians of celebrations in Aleppo itself, as well as in Lebanon, Turkey, and even London.
But the route remains open only to military movements, and “not a single civilian has left the eastern districts because the road is too unsafe and not secured”, Abdel Rahman said.
The rebel advance now puts the estimated 1.2 million living in government-held districts of the city under opposition encirclement, he added. A source in Damascus confirmed that the road to western Aleppo was closed. “There are no safe routes for civilians in government-held districts to use to get into or out of the city”, he told AFP. “Now I’m more optimistic after the Army of Conquest’s advance”.
Sana said 10 civilians were killed on Saturday in rebel shelling on two government-held districts.
On Sunday, at least one girl was killed in opposition fire on Hamdaniyeh, said the Observatory.
The monitor said more than 700 fighters from both sides had been killed in the onslaught, a lot of them rebels because of the regime’s “aerial superiority”.
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The multi-sided civil war in Syria, which has been raging since 2011, has drawn in regional and global powers, caused the world’s worst humanitarian emergency and attracted recruits to Islamist militancy from around the world.
