Syrian government forces yesterday repelled a renewed rebel assault southwest of the city of Aleppo, forcing opposition forces to retreat from positions they seized a daily earlier, the Syrian government and activists said.
The development followed intense battles between the two sides.
The attempt to seize new ground around the city was spearheaded by a coalition of rebel and militant groups, including Syria’s rebranded al-Qaeda branch, which now goes under the name of Fath al-Sham.
Photo: AFP
Fath al-Sham was formerly known as the Nusra Front but recently changed its name and said it was severing ties with the global terror network in an apparent attempt to evade Russian and US-led airstrikes targeting militants.
Fighting in Aleppo, once Syria’s largest city and commercial capital, has intensified in recent weeks.
The city near the Turkish border has been split between a rebel-held eastern part and a government-held western part since 2012.
The rebel assault, which began Sunday, targeted key army positions at a cement factory southwest of Aleppo, with Fath al-Sham posting video purporting to show militants pounding government positions with artillery and tank fire.
However, opposition activists and militant Web sites yesterday reported that the rebels and militants retreated from all positions they seized near the cement factory following a massive government counterattack.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least 35 rebels were killed in the fighting.
A Syrian military official said the Syrian air force launched “precise airstrikes on groupings and movements of terrorist groups south and west of Aleppo” that resulted in the death of dozens of “terrorists.”
The official spoke on condition of anonymity in line with regulations.
The Observatory on Sunday said that dozens of civilians had been killed over the weekend in Aleppo.
Government and Russian airstrikes and artillery bombardment of opposition neighborhoods and the outskirts of the city on Saturday killed 46 civilians, and another nine were killed by opposition shelling in government-held areas of western Aleppo, it said.
Another 20 people were killed in rural villages in nearby Idlib Province after 26 airstrikes on Saturday, the group said.
Activists and journalists in Idlib also confirmed the airstrikes.
Over the past two weeks, the civilian death toll in Aleppo Province has risen to at least 327, a third of the victims women and children, according to the Observatory’s figures. Of those, 233 civilians were killed in the city of Aleppo, 102 in opposition areas and 126 in government areas. The group did not clarify where the other five civilians had died.
While most of the opposition victims died in aerial bombardments, those on the government side were killed by shelling.
In both cases, women and children made up a large number of the victims: 40 children and 18 women killed in government areas, and 18 children and nine women were killed in opposition areas, according to the group’s figures.
Also in Aleppo Province, a suicide bomber on Sunday killed at least 36 rebels and a Turkish officer on a bus crossing into Syria from Turkey.
Additional reporting by New York Times News Service
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