Syrian cease-fire ends; Aleppo battle resumes

Rebels launch plan to break siege

BEIRUT -- Fighting returned to Syria's Aleppo on Sunday after a cease-fire to allow rebels and civilians to leave the city's besieged eastern districts expired with no evacuations.

As rebels and pro-government forces battled in the contested city's southern countryside, a pro-opposition media outlet circulated footage of a powerful and hard-line Islamist rebel coalition announcing that the campaign to break the government's siege of the city's east would begin "within hours."

Jaish al-Fatah commander Ali Abu Adi al-Aloush told the Qasioun News Agency that "zero hour has drawn near," and that militants and kamikaze fighters had begun moving toward Aleppo. It was unclear when the interview was recorded.

"The attacks have started again, and they are so crazy, so intense," said Zakaria Malahifji, a member of the Fastakim rebel unit, which is battling in the northern city.

He added that the "rebels are preparing for a large-scale offense to break the siege of Aleppo."

Since Saturday, rebel forces have warned residents in the east to avoid front-line areas, apparently in anticipation of more attacks.

Before the pause, Russian and Syrian government warplanes had been targeting homes, hospitals and infrastructure in the city's east.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitoring group, said Saturday that more than 2,100 civilians, including 479 children, have been killed in Aleppo in the past six months.

On Friday, the top U.N. human-rights official, Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein, condemned the assaults on rebel areas of Aleppo as "crimes of historic proportions."

Meanwhile in Lebanon, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah cast the insurgency against Syrian President Bashar Assad as a facade designed to weaken Iran's regional access and make "changes to the map," vowing to stay in the country until it could "defeat the apostate project."

Nasrallah in a speech Sunday afternoon said the Syrian rebellion is "not about the fall of the regime, but about targeting the axis of resistance," a reference to the Iran-Syria-Hezbollah alliance. Assad has long provided a corridor for Iranian weapons shipments to the Lebanese militant group, which grew out of the resistance to the Israeli occupation of Lebanon's south between 1982 and 2000. Thousands of Hezbollah fighters are on the ground in Syria in defense of Assad's government, and senior commanders in Iran's powerful Republican Guard are in advisory positions.

Government artillery shelled the strategically important village of Khan Touman, which overlooks the highway connecting Aleppo and government-held cities in the center of the country, the activist-run Shahba Press reported Sunday. Rebels led by al-Qaida-linked militants took the town from government forces in a surprising advance last May, dealing a setback to the joint Russian-Syrian campaign to expel rebels from Aleppo.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported incremental advances for pro-government forces against al-Qaida-linked Jabhat Fatah al-Sham militants in the city's southern countryside.

Al-Manar TV, run by Hezbollah, broadcast footage of tanks and fighters advancing under heavy fire along a ridge reportedly in the Aleppo countryside.

A spokesman for the Nour el-Din al-Zinki rebel faction in Aleppo said an operation to break the government's siege of the rebel-held eastern districts of Aleppo was "coming."

Yasser al-Yousef clarified that rebels would not target civilians in Aleppo's government-held districts, but warned of collateral damage from the anticipated operations.

The escalations follow the conclusion of a three-day cease-fire arranged by the Russian and Syrian military commands to allow rebels and civilians to leave eastern Aleppo.

Few, if any, of the estimated 200,000 residents in the war-ravaged rebel neighborhoods took advantage of the Russian-led pause in fighting, choosing instead to stay put. U.N. officials attribute this to a lack of guarantees from the Assad government to help evacuate wounded and sick residents in opposition areas.

Government media accused rebel fighters of preventing the sick and wounded from fleeing opposition areas. But residents of east Aleppo contacted by telephone said people fear arrest and worse consequences if they leave.

They also have cited confusion about the parameters of the cease-fire. Text messages from the government said civilians had eight hours a day to leave rebel-held areas through designated corridors, but U.N. officials said Moscow informed them that it would last for 11.

The fighting around Aleppo ran in parallel with renewed clashes farther from the city between Turkish-backed opposition forces and Syrian Kurdish forces over territory formerly held by the Islamic State group. The activist-run Aleppo Media Center said Turkish forces struck more than 50 Kurdish positions on Sunday alone. The U.S. has backed both the Turkish-backed forces and the Syrian Kurdish forces in the area, though it has clarified that it does not support the Syrian Kurdish forces that have come under Turkish attack in the Aleppo countryside.

The Turkish military intervened in the Syrian war in August this year under orders from Ankara to clear the border area of Islamic State fighters and U.S.-backed Syrian Kurdish forces linked to Turkey's own outlawed Kurdish insurgency. The Turkish government considers both to be terrorist groups.

To the country's south, a 24-truck convoy arrived at the formerly besieged town of Moadamiyeh, in the suburbs of Damascus, to deliver food, winter clothes, lamps, and medical supplies.

The convoy was the first to reach Moadamiyeh since a deal was made to restore the government's authority over the former bastion of rebel strength and support. The government recently granted safe passage out to some 2,000 rebels and civilians.

Local resident Mahmoud, who did not give his name out of security concerns, said the materials would be distributed today.

He said locals have been able to move freely in and out of Moadamiyeh for the first time in years and that the prices of goods were cheaper in areas that were under government control.

Information for this article was contributed by Philip Issa of The Associated Press and by Hugh Naylor and Zakaria Zakaria of The Washington Post.

A Section on 10/24/2016

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