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Rebels captured a government military base Monday on the outskirts of Aleppo, the hotly contested Syrian metropolis that has seen more than a week of bloody clashes.
The base had about 200 Syrian troops and appeared to be under attack by rebels from three sides overnight.
“The battle lasted around nine hours,” said Fazad Abdel Nasr, a rebel commander working in the northern Aleppo suburbs. Nasr said six regime soldiers and four rebel fighters were killed.
Syrian troops said they had recaptured a district of Syria’s largest city Aleppo, after heavy fighting against rebels who remain in control of swathes of the commercial hub despite being pushed out of the capital Damascus.
The past two weeks have seen forces of President Bashar al-Assad struggle as never before to maintain their grip on the country after a major rebel advance into the two main cities and a July 18 explosion that killed four top security officials.
Fierce fighting has resumed today in Syria’s second city, Aleppo, according to activists, who say rebels are resisting a major army offensive.
Air and ground attacks by President Assad’s forces have so far failed to dislodge opposition fighters from the many neighbourhoods under their control.
The Syrian army launched a massive assault on rebels in Aleppo on Saturday amid growing world concern about the risks of reprisals against the civilian population of the country’s second city.
Troops backed by tanks and helicopter gunships, which had been massing for the past two days, moved on southwestern districts of the commercial hub, where rebel fighters concentrated their forces when they seized much of the northern city on July 20.
Artillery pounded Salaheddin and other rebel neighbourhoods from 8 am (0500 GMT) as ground troops advanced, an AFP correspondent reported.
The State Department said Thursday the Syrian dictatorship is preparing a massacre in Syria’s largest city, Aleppo.
Aleppo is a city of more than 3 million people, the size of Los Angeles. Refugees are pouring out of town. It was a year and a half ago that a popular uprising rebelled against the 42-year-old dictatorship of the Assad family. Rebels have taken some Aleppo’s neighborhoods.
One recent photograph from the embattled city stands out: Five-year-old Mohammad Amumrej, wounded during Syrian army shelling of the town, is whisked away for medical treatment.