ALEPPO // Syria’s regime and rebels were on Sunday locked in fierce fighting on Aleppo’s western edges, where 38 civilians have been killed in an opposition offensive to break a devastating government siege.
Since launching their large scale assault on Friday, the rebels have unleashed a salvo of rockets, car bombs, and shells to break through government lines and reach the 250,000 people living in the city’s east.
On Sunday UN peace envoy to Syria Staffan de Mistura strongly condemned rebel rocket attacks on civilian areas in west Aleppo.
“Credible reports ... indicate that scores of civilians in west Aleppo have been killed, including several children, and hundreds wounded due to relentless and indiscriminate attacks from armed opposition groups,” Mr De Mistura’s office said.
“[The envoy] is appalled and shocked by the high number of rockets indiscriminately launched by armed opposition groups on civilian suburbs of western Aleppo in the last 48 hours.”
Syrian state media accused the rebels of firing shells containing toxic gas into government-controlled districts.
State news agency Sana reported that 35 people were suffering from shortness of breath, numbness, and muscle spasms after “toxic gases” hit the front line district of Dahiyet Al Assad and regime-held Hamdaniyah in Aleppo.
The head of Aleppo University Hospital, Ibrahim Hadid, told state television that “36 people, including civilians and combatants, were wounded after inhaling toxic chlorine gas released by terrorists”.
Intense fighting rocked the western districts on Sunday. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based opposition monitoring group, said western districts were hit by hundreds of rebel rockets and artillery shelling.
Two days of heavy rebel bombardment have killed 38 civilians, including 14 children, and wounded another 250, according to the Observatory.
The monitoring group said fighting had also killed 55 regime and allied fighters, as well as 64 Syrian rebels.
About 1,500 rebels have massed on a 15-kilometre front along the western edges of Aleppo since Friday, initially scoring quick gains in the Dahiyet Al Assad district but struggling to push east since then.
Jaish Al Fatah, a rebel alliance including powerful extremist factions, said on Sunday that it was now moving into a second stage of the offensive after taking several areas with the goal of “ending the siege”.
The alliance called on residents of government-held areas to stay at home or in underground shelters, saying its fighters were coming to “liberate” their land. It urged fighters not to harm anyone who did not carry arms.
Rebels and pro-government sites said most of Sunday’s fighting was concentrated on the 3000 Apartments housing project in Al Hamdaniyah. Capturing the project would bring the rebels to within several kilometres of the heart of the government-controlled area.
Rebels said the attack had started with preparatory shelling earlier in the day, while both the rebels and pro-government sites said Russian planes had resumed heavy bombing of opposition locations in west Aleppo.
There were conflicting accounts of the outcome of the fighting, however, with the rebels saying they had taken some buildings in the residential area.
The Observatory said suicide bombers were deployed on the outskirts of the neighbourhood, a tactic used on Friday when opposition fighters seized Dahiyet Al Assad, a cluster of villas once occupied by top army officers in the south-west corner of the city.
“There are heavy street battles and the regime is now retreating from the area. Its only a matter of time and we will announce its liberation,” said Abu Al Ansari, a fighter from the Failaq Al Sham rebel group.
* Agence France-Presse, Reuters
