(Zaman Al Wasl)- Syrian Resistance has killed at least 30 fighter loyal to Bashar al-Assad, including Iraqi militants in Sheikh Saeed battlefield south of Aleppo city, senior commander said.
Abu Bashir Maara, the militarily commander of Fateh Aleppo's Operation Room said the Resistance has also taken captive 8 militants and soldiers in the fighting that was concentrated in Sheikh Saeed next to Ramousah, where the most intense battles earlier this summer took place, but there were conflicting accounts of whether the army made any gains.
Regime forces backed by 5000 Shiite fighters from Iraq have been pressing to encircle the eastern neighborhoods of Aleppo since the last three weeks, launching the fiercest aerial and ground campaign ever.
Air strikes on eastern Aleppo by the regime military and Russian jets remained significantly lighter than during the previous two weeks following an army announcement on Wednesday that it would lessen its bombardment.
A regime military source said the army had captured several important positions on Sheikh Saeed's hilltop, but resisitence said later that those gains had been reversed and that insurgents still held the area.
Later in the day a number of air strikes hit areas of Sheikh Saeed, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group reported. Syrian state TV meanwhile reported that rebel shelling of regime-held neighborhoods killed four people and wounded many more. The Observatory said insurgent shelling had killed 15 people in Aleppo over the past 24 hours.
The Observatory said that according to its own tallies, thousands of people had been killed in Russian air strikes over the past year, a significant number of them civilians.
Since the start of an offensive two weeks ago, following the collapse of a short ceasefire, the army and its allies have made some progress in northern and central districts of rebel-held eastern Aleppo.
However, to completely storm eastern Aleppo could take months and would involve the destruction of the city and great loss of life, de Mistura said on Thursday.
More than 250,000 people are believed to be trapped in eastern Aleppo, facing severe shortages of food and medicine.
Russia said on Friday that a draft U.N. resolution for a truce in Aleppo was unacceptable, as Moscow faced growing international pressure to stop a devastating bombardment of the city backed by Russian air power.
Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov said a draft put forward by France contained a number of unacceptable points and politicized the issue of humanitarian aid.
But Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Russia would support an eye-catching proposal by U.N. Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura to escort militants out of Aleppo personally.
Russia was ready to call on the Syrian government to allow fighters from the Islamist Nusra Front to leave the city with their weapons, Lavrov said.
Lavrov was speaking a day after al-Assad offered fighters and their families amnesty to leave rebel-held eastern Aleppo under guarantee of safe passage to other parts of Syria held by the insurgents.
However, rebels have told Reuters they do not trust Assad, and have said they believe such an agreement would be aimed at purging Sunni Muslims from eastern Aleppo.
The offer follows two weeks of the heaviest bombardment of the 5-1/2-year civil war, which has killed hundreds of people trapped inside Aleppo's eastern sector and torpedoed a U.S.-backed peace initiative. (With Reuters)
Abu Bashir Maara, the militarily commander of Fateh Aleppo's Operation Room said the Resistance has also taken captive 8 militants and soldiers in the fighting that was concentrated in Sheikh Saeed next to Ramousah, where the most intense battles earlier this summer took place, but there were conflicting accounts of whether the army made any gains.
Regime forces backed by 5000 Shiite fighters from Iraq have been pressing to encircle the eastern neighborhoods of Aleppo since the last three weeks, launching the fiercest aerial and ground campaign ever.
Air strikes on eastern Aleppo by the regime military and Russian jets remained significantly lighter than during the previous two weeks following an army announcement on Wednesday that it would lessen its bombardment.
A regime military source said the army had captured several important positions on Sheikh Saeed's hilltop, but resisitence said later that those gains had been reversed and that insurgents still held the area.
Later in the day a number of air strikes hit areas of Sheikh Saeed, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group reported. Syrian state TV meanwhile reported that rebel shelling of regime-held neighborhoods killed four people and wounded many more. The Observatory said insurgent shelling had killed 15 people in Aleppo over the past 24 hours.
The Observatory said that according to its own tallies, thousands of people had been killed in Russian air strikes over the past year, a significant number of them civilians.
Since the start of an offensive two weeks ago, following the collapse of a short ceasefire, the army and its allies have made some progress in northern and central districts of rebel-held eastern Aleppo.
However, to completely storm eastern Aleppo could take months and would involve the destruction of the city and great loss of life, de Mistura said on Thursday.
More than 250,000 people are believed to be trapped in eastern Aleppo, facing severe shortages of food and medicine.
Russia said on Friday that a draft U.N. resolution for a truce in Aleppo was unacceptable, as Moscow faced growing international pressure to stop a devastating bombardment of the city backed by Russian air power.
Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov said a draft put forward by France contained a number of unacceptable points and politicized the issue of humanitarian aid.
But Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Russia would support an eye-catching proposal by U.N. Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura to escort militants out of Aleppo personally.
Russia was ready to call on the Syrian government to allow fighters from the Islamist Nusra Front to leave the city with their weapons, Lavrov said.
Lavrov was speaking a day after al-Assad offered fighters and their families amnesty to leave rebel-held eastern Aleppo under guarantee of safe passage to other parts of Syria held by the insurgents.
However, rebels have told Reuters they do not trust Assad, and have said they believe such an agreement would be aimed at purging Sunni Muslims from eastern Aleppo.
The offer follows two weeks of the heaviest bombardment of the 5-1/2-year civil war, which has killed hundreds of people trapped inside Aleppo's eastern sector and torpedoed a U.S.-backed peace initiative. (With Reuters)
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