BEIRUT – Syrian regime troops suffered losses in their campaign to encircle Aleppo as the UN mediator for the conflict announced the Assad regime was ready for a ceasefire in the northern city.
“At least seventy pro-regime fighters, including Syrian army troops, National Defense Force members and Iranian and Afghan volunteers, were killed in Aleppo and its countryside [since Tuesday],” the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported Wednesday.
Insurgents suffered heavy losses as well in the back-and-forth fighting, with over 60 Syrian rebels and at least 20 non-Syrian fighters in the Al-Nusra Front killed, the Observatory added.
The monitor group said the deadly battles continued to rage in Aleppo’s northwestern outskirts as well as in areas north of the city, where rebels have held back a regime offensive aiming to encircle Aleppo.
Alaraby Aljadeed reported Wednesday that the regime campaign was based on “a new strategy based on all-out surprise assault, targeting all opposition positions in Aleppo, but the [opposition] managed to absorb and thwart the plan.”
Pro-Syrian government daily Al-Watan heralded the start of the campaign on Sunday in a report touting that regime were prepared to launch “Operation Zero Hour” to encircle rebels in eastern Aleppo.
Rebels hold back the regime offensive
The battlefield situation north of Aleppo continued to remain in the balance, as the regime campaign to cut rebel supply lines into the northern city stalled.
“The Syrian regime and its allies launched ‘Operation Zero Hour’ on Tuesday [morning] to lift the [rebel] siege on the towns of Nubl and Zahraa and to sever the rebel’s supply lines,” Alaraby Aljadeed reported Wednesday.
Nubl and Zahraa, two Shiite towns northwest of Aleppo, have been besieged by Syrian rebels since the summer of 2012. Islamist fighters in late 2014 stepped up their campaign on the Shiite towns in a bid to relieve fighters under regime attacks further to the south on the highway to Aleppo.
On Tuesday, the regime troops backed by Shiite fighters had reportedly seized the town of Bashkuwi and raided Ratyan, a little over 10 kilometers north of Aleppo and 6 kilometers southwest of Nubl and Zahraa.
Regime forces and militias took advantage of heavy fog Tuesday morning to move from government controlled Sifat to Bashkuwi, which they captured, before advancing northward to Ratyan, Alaraby Aljadeed cited a media activist as saying.
A resident in the area told the London-based daily that a number of civilians had been injured in the fighting Tuesday as regime troops approached Ratyan.
“The residents were forced to [flee] amid heavy shooting between [rebels and regime troops], resulting in the injury of a number of people who have been transferred to field hospitals in the region.”
Following the regime’s Tuesday advances, the Al-Nusra Front with backing from other Islamist battalions on Wednesday had pushed backpro-regime troops in Ratyan.
“Sixty-one regime troops were able to flee to Nubl and Zahraa from Ratyan, leaving dozens of corpses behind,” the SOHR reported.
Alaraby Aljadeed reported that rebels “were able to make up for the breach to their north Aleppo defensive lines when they summoned a large number of reinforcements from various areas under their control in Aleppo countryside and from the city itself.”
The report added that the reinforcements prevented the fall of Ratyan as well as the town of Hardatayn to the north, where regime troops had seized ground.
“This has prompted the regime to launch airstrikes in order to support their ground forces, bombing the towns of Hayyan, Bayanoun and Mayer which lie directly to the east of Nubl and Zahraa, and from which opposition forces launch operations against regime forces in Ratyan and Hardatayn.”
UN ceasefire efforts
The heavy Aleppo fighting comes amid efforts by UN peace envoy Steffan de Misturta to implement a ceasefire in the area.
Late Tuesday, the diplomat told reporters that the regime was ready for a ceasefire in Aleppo, but did not specify a potential start date.
"The government of Syria has indicated to me its willingness to halt all aerial bombing ... and artillery shelling for a period of six weeks all over the city of Aleppo from a date which we will be announcing from Damascus,” Reuters quoted him as saying.
However, Syrian opposition figures have voiced doubts over the Syrian regime’s willingness for a ceasefire and of de Mistura’s intentions himself.
The Revolutionary Command Council, an alliance of 72 rebel groups including the Syria Revolutionary Front operating in Aleppo, said Monday the UN envoy was taking a “dishonest position towards the revolution of the Syrian people.”
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