AFP
Beirut
A new Islamist rebel alliance, including Al Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate, was locked in a fierce battle yesterday to seize government-held areas of Aleppo, the divided former economic capital.
Once a powerhouse of industry, Aleppo has been devastated by years of fighting between regime forces and a succession of rebel groups.
Clashes raged overnight as the Islamist alliance, which calls itself Ansar al-Shariah, sought to take control of the air force intelligence headquarters in Zahra, on Aleppo’s northwestern outskirts, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
According to the British-based monitor, the 13 groups in the alliance announced the launch of the “Ansar al-Shariah operations room” on Thursday.
They said the aim was to “liberate Aleppo and the countryside” and “to draft a joint covenant to run Aleppo after its liberation in line with Shariah”.
The rebels advanced to take control of several buildings in Zahra despite regime air strikes, according to Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman.
“There were at least 35 dead among insurgent ranks and dozens of killed and wounded on the regime side,” he said.
The coalition, which includes Al Qaeda’s Syrian associate Al Nusra Front, the rival of the Islamic State militant group, pledged “victory for the Muslims of Aleppo”.
Syrian state television said that the army had “foiled attempts to infiltrate Aleppo on several fronts, killing more than 100 terrorists”—the regime’s standard term for all rebel groups.
To the west of the city, rebels from a different Islamist-dominated alliance called Conquest of Aleppo captured parts of a military research centre, the Observatory said.
It said 11 rebels and an unknown number of regime troops were killed in that battle.
On Thursday, Ansar al-Shariah launched a multi-district assault on government-held parts of Aleppo city, in attacks that killed at least four civilians, the Observatory said.
Rebels fired several hundred rockets and projectiles into at least seven government-held neighbourhoods, with the army returning fire and regime aircraft carrying out raids.
Fighting resumed yesterday before dawn on pro-government areas of the Ashrafiyeh and Khaldiyeh in the city’s northern and western sectors, the monitor said.
Abdel Rahman said hundreds of shells fell on both government- and rebel-held areas of the city, in what he said was Aleppo’s “worst night” since 2012.
One Aleppo resident, a 23-year-old student who gave her name as Sahar, said fighting had been “intensive”.
“We are used to the sound of explosions but yesterday (Thursday) there were so many. We heard the blasts but because they were coming from everywhere we didn’t know where the shells were falling,” she said by telephone.
Control of Aleppo has been divided between government and rebel forces since shortly after fighting began there in mid-2012.
The regime largely controls the west of the city, with rebels from different factions present in the east.
The situation is largely reversed in the countryside surrounding the city, and both government and rebel forces have at times sought to encircle their opponents and besiege them.
Activist Karim Obeid said the Ansar al-Shariah coalition had targeted Aleppo’s Zahra “because the (Syrian) army regularly bombs opposition-held locations from there”.
