Battle lines drawn for Aleppo

Syrian regime forces and rebel factions sent hundreds of reinforcements to Aleppo on Monday as opposition fighters announced an all-out offensive to take the country’s second city.
The battle for Syria’s former economic powerhouse is intensifying after an opposition advance at the weekend broke through a three-week government siege of the city’s rebel-held east, dealing a major setback to regime troops.
Rebel forces on Sunday announced a bid to capture all of Aleppo city, which if successful would mark the biggest opposition victory yet in Syria’s five-year civil war.
In a desperate bid to break the siege, a coalition of rebels and fighters overran a series of buildings in a military academy on the southwestern edges of Aleppo on Saturday.
They then pushed northeast to link up with rebel groups inside the city.
Emboldened by the victory, the fighters — largely grouped under the banner of the Army of Conquest — then set their sights on recapturing all of Aleppo city.
In a statement on Sunday the Army of Conquest announced “the start of a new phase to liberate all of Aleppo,” pledging to “double the number of fighters for this next battle.”
Abdel Rahman told AFP on Monday that hundreds of opposition fighters had arrived in Aleppo from the surrounding province and neighboring Idlib.
Most were from the Fateh Al-Sham Front, the powerful group previously affiliated with Al-Qaeda that leads the Army of Conquest. The group changed its name from Al-Nusra Front last month after breaking with Al-Qaeda.
“Whoever wins (in Aleppo), the war will not end. It is however an important battle, the result of which will set the course of the conflict,” said Thomas Pierret, a Syria expert at the University of Edinburgh. “If the rebels win, Syria will head toward partition, with a regime arc in the Golan Heights, Damascus, Homs, and the coast,” he said.
But if the regime wins, Pierret expected a “collapse” of the rebel insurgency in its heartland of Idlib. Residents of both sides of the city have been living in fear of competing sieges of their neighborhoods in recent weeks.
The rebel advance at the weekend cut off the regime’s access route on the city’s southern edges, which had been used to bring in supplies for the estimated 1.2 million residents of western districts.
Regime forces brought in dozens of trucks carrying food and fuel into the western neighborhoods via the northern Castello Road, according to the Observatory for Human Rights.
“This is the new route that the regime forces are securing as a temporary alternative to the route they previously depended on,” Abdel Rahman said.
Syrian state television Al-Ikhbariyah confirmed that “fuel, food, and vegetables entered Aleppo city.”
But forces loyal to President Bashar Assad are putting up a fierce fight and have begun pouring reinforcements into the city.
The observatory also said some 2,000 pro-regime fighters from Syria, Iraq, Iran and Lebanese Shiite movement Hezbollah had arrived in Aleppo since late Sunday.
“Both sides are amassing their fighters in preparation for the great battle of Aleppo,” said Rami Abdel Rahman, the head of the Britain-based Observatory.
The Monday edition of Al-Watan, a Syrian daily close to the government, reported that the army had received “the necessary military reinforcements to launch the battle to retake the areas from which it withdrew.”

Source: Arab News