Aleppo counterattack launched by Syrian rebels

Syrian rebels including extremists counterattacked the army and its allies on Friday aiming to break a weeks-long siege on eastern Aleppo, insurgents said.
The assault, employing heavy shelling and suicide car bombs, was mainly focused on the city’s western edge by rebels based in the countryside outside Aleppo. It included Jabhat Fateh Al-Sham, a former affiliate of Al-Qaeda previously known as the Nusra Front, and groups fighting under the Free Syrian Army banner.
The offensive prompted the Russian Defense Ministry to ask President Vladimir Putin for permission to resume airstrikes against militants in rebel-held eastern Aleppo after 10 days in which the army said it had not struck, Russia’s Interfax news agency reported.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a British-based war monitor, said more than 15 civilians had been killed and 100 wounded by rebel shelling of government-held western Aleppo. State media reported that seven civilians were killed.
There were conflicting accounts of advances in areas on the city’s outskirts.
Photographs showed insurgents approaching Aleppo in tanks, armored vehicles, bulldozers, make-shift mine sweepers, pick-up trucks and on motorcycles, and showed a large column of smoke rising in the distance after an explosion.
Fateh Al-Sham said in a statement that rebels had gained control over Dahiyet Assad, a suburb with a low-rise residential district of about a square kilometer on the southwest corner of the city.
Zakaria Malahifji, an official with Fastaqim, a nationalist rebel group in the offensive, said insurgents had captured the residential area but not the whole of Dahiyet Assad. The Observatory said rebels had gained most of the suburb.
But a Syrian military source said earlier that the army and its allies had thwarted what he called “an extensive attack” on south and west Aleppo. A state television station reported that the army had destroyed four car bombs.
Meanwhile, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin feels that the resumption of airstrikes in Aleppo is unnecessary for now, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Friday.
Putin rejects resuming the strikes in order to give the United States time to separate terrorist groups from the moderate opposition and to allow militants and civilians to leave Aleppo, Peskov said.
However, Russia reserves the right to use all means and force to support Syrian Army, he added. 
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Friday condemned an attack on a school in government-held west Aleppo that killed a number of Syrian children. “Such attacks, if deliberate, may amount to war crimes,” Ban said in a statement.
Separately, it emerged that a Russian fighter flew dangerously close to a US warplane over eastern Syria. US defense officials revealed it on Friday, highlighting the risks of a serious mishap in the increasingly crowded airspace.
The near miss occurred late on Oct. 17, when a Russian jet that was escorting a larger spy plane maneuvered in the vicinity of an American warplane, Air Force Lt. Gen. Jeff Harrigan said. The Russian jet came to “inside of half a mile,” he added.
Another US military official, speaking on condition of anonymity , said the American pilot could feel the turbulence produced by the Russian jet’s engines.
“It was close enough you could feel the jet wash of the plane passing by,” the official said.
It appeared the Russian pilot had simply not seen the US jet, as it was dark and the planes were flying without lights.
“I would attribute it to not having the necessary situational awareness given all those platforms operating together,” Harrigan said.
In a new development, Syria’s foreign minister said government forces could agree to another cessation of fighting around Aleppo, but only if it received guarantees from rebel forces that civilians would be allowed to leave the city.
At a news conference with his Russian counterpart in Moscow, Foreign Minister Walid Al-Muallem said the recent so-called “humanitarian pause” in the Aleppo fighting was ruined by fighters whom he called terrorists firing on the evacuation corridors.
“We are ready to again repeat this attempt after we receive guarantees that confirm that the countries supporting these terrorist organizations are prepared to act so that civilians could use the cease-fire,” he said.

Source: Arab News