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Fierce fighting in Syria’s Aleppo but air raids abate

Syria’s army and allies clashed on Friday in the south of Aleppo with rebels seeking to oust Bashar al-Assad, a military source, rebels and a monitor said.
The fighting was concentrated in Sheikh Saeed, a rebel-held district of the city 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.
Air strikes on rebel-held eastern Aleppo by the Syrian 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.
“Today there’s no bombardment on the neighborhoods in the city, until now. We don’t know what will happen in an hour,” said Ammar al-Selmo, head of the civil defense rescue organization in Aleppo.
A Syrian military source said on Friday morning that the army had captured several important positions on Sheikh Saeed’s hilltop, but rebels said later that all those gains had been reversed and that insurgents still held the area.
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, home to more than 250,000 people.
They have captured the Handarat refugee camp and part of an industrial district next to it on eastern Aleppo’s northern outskirts, part of the Bustan al-Basha district just north of the city center and some ground in the central Old City.
However, to completely storm eastern Aleppo could take months and would involve the destruction of the city and great loss of life, the United Nations Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura said on Thursday.
Rebel shelling on government-held western Aleppo killed 11 people on Thursday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor said on Friday.


Source: Reuters, 07 Oct. 2016

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