Aleppo (Syria) (AFP) – Syrian opposition fighters made advances Friday in a major assault on government forces aimed at breaking a months-long siege of rebel-held districts of the battered city of Aleppo.
Rebel groups including the powerful Ahrar al-Sham faction and former Al-Qaeda affiliate Fateh al-Sham Front fired waves of rockets into government-held western Aleppo, killing at least 15 civilians, a monitor said.
The rebels also targeted government positions east of Aleppo city and in the coastal province of Latakia, including the Hmeimim military base used by Russian forces allied with the regime.
The assault comes more than three months into a government siege of eastern Aleppo, where more than 250,000 people live, and several weeks after the army began an operation to retake the rebel east.
Rebel groups “announce the start of the battle to break the siege of Aleppo”, said Abu Yusef Muhajir, a military commander and spokesman for Ahrar al-Sham.
The assault “will end the regime occupation of western Aleppo and break the siege on the people trapped inside”, he told AFP.
“The breaking of the siege is inevitable,” said Yasser al-Yusef, a member of the political office of the Nureddine al-Zinki rebel group.
“We will protect the civilians and schools and hospitals from Russian attacks and bring our people food and medicine,” he said.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitor, said at least 15 civilians, including a woman and two children, had been killed, and more than 100 wounded in rebel fire on western Aleppo.
– Rocket fire –
The monitor reported fierce clashes on multiple fronts on the western and southern outskirts of west Aleppo, with three suicide car bombs targeting a checkpoint in the Dahiyet al-Assad neighbourhood.
Fighting is continuing in the area near a military academy, it said, but had no immediate toll.
An AFP correspondent in east Aleppo said the assault had boosted morale in rebel-held districts, with mosques broadcasting “God is greatest” from loudspeakers.
He said residents burned tyres, sending smoke over the city to provide cover against air attack.
Heavy rain put the fires out but also hampered Russian and Syrian air operations, creating what one rebel dubbed “a divine no-fly zone”.
The Observatory said rebels had also fired dozens of rockets at the Nairab military airport and Aleppo international airport, both east of the city and government-controlled.
Rebels also launched rockets from Idlib province into the government stronghold of Latakia, killing one person and wounding six.
Rockets struck close to the Hmeimim military airport, as well as near President Bashar al-Assad’s ancestral village Qardaha, the monitor said.
Syrian state television said “the army has foiled an attempt by terrorists to attack Aleppo city from several axes with suicide bomb attacks and has inflicted losses on them”.
“Terrorist groups have made no advances and clashes are continuing,” it added.
State news agency SANA said government planes were carrying out air strikes south and west of Aleppo.
– ‘UN unprofessional’: Lavrov –
Once Syria’s economic powerhouse, Aleppo has been ravaged by the conflict that began in March 2011 with anti-government protests and has since killed more than 300,000 people.
Aleppo has been divided between government control in the west and rebel control in the east since mid-2012, and in September the army announced an operation to recapture the whole city.
The assault, backed by Russian forces, has killed hundreds of civilians and destroyed infrastructure including hospitals, prompting international outrage.
The UN’s aid chief Stephen O’Brien this week said Aleppo had become “a kill zone”, adding that “nothing is actually happening to stop the war, stop the suffering”.
Last week, Russia implemented a three-day “humanitarian truce” intended to allow civilians and surrendering rebels to exit the east through passages to western neighbourhoods.
But few left, and a UN plan to evacuate the wounded failed because security could not be guaranteed.
Russia says it has not bombed Aleppo since October 18, but senior Russian military official Sergei Rudskoi told a briefing that the military had asked President Vladimir Putin for authorisation to resume its air strikes.
Also Friday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov accused UN agencies of “not being professional enough” over Aleppo.
Speaking in Moscow after meeting the Syrian and Iranian foreign ministers, he said: “Their inaction allowed the medical evacuation to be sabotaged.”
Lavrov urged the UN to resist the “hysterical campaign of lies about the humanitarian situation in Aleppo”.
The United States, meanwhile, reported that Russian and American warplanes had a near miss over Syria on October 17, highlighting the risks of a serious mishap in increasingly crowded airspace.