The leader of Lebanon's Hezbollah movement said on Friday it will send more fighters to Syria's Aleppo area, a battleground where it has suffered heavy losses fighting alongside Syrian government forces against insurgent groups.
Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said thousands of Hezbollah's Sunni militant foes had recently entered Syria via the Turkish border with the aim of taking over Aleppo and its surrounding countryside.
"We are facing a new wave...of projects of war against Syria which are being waged in northern Syria, particularly in the Aleppo region," Nasrallah said in a speech broadcast live on the group's Al Manar TV.
"The defense of Aleppo is the defense of the rest of Syria, it is the defense of Damascus, it is also the defense of Lebanon, and of Iraq," he said.
"We will increase our presence in Aleppo," he said. "Retreat is not permissible."
Shi'ite, Iranian-backed Hezbollah has long supported President Bashar al-Assad against mostly Sunni insurgents.
Aleppo has been a focus of intensified fighting in the months since peace talks in Geneva broke down and a ceasefire deal brokered by Washington and Moscow unraveled. Russia intervened in the five-year-old conflict in September with an air campaign to support Assad.
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