Islamist alliance in battle for Syria’s Aleppo
BEIRUT: A new Islamist rebel alliance, including Al-Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate, was locked in a fierce battle yesterday to seize governmentheld areas of Aleppo, the divided former economic capital. Once a powerhouse of industry, Aleppo has been devastated by years of fighting between regime forces and a succession of rebel groups.
Clashes raged overnight as the Islamist alliance, which calls itself Ansar Al-Sharia, sought to take control of the air force intelligence headquarters in Zahra, on Aleppo’s northwestern outskirts, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. According to the British-based monitor, the 13 groups in the alliance announced the launch of the “Ansar Al-Sharia operations room” on Thursday. They said the aim was to “liberate Aleppo and the countryside” and “to draft a joint covenant to run Aleppo after its liberation in line with sharia” Islamic law.
The rebel fighters advanced to take control of several buildings in Zahra despite regime air strikes, according to Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman. “There were at least 35 dead among insurgent ranks and dozens of killed and wounded on the regime side,” he told AFP.
Syrian state television said that the army had “foiled attempts to infiltrate Aleppo on several fronts, killing more than 100 terrorists”-the regime’s standard term for all rebel groups.
Ansar Al-Sharia launched a multi-district assault on governmentheld parts of Aleppo city on Thursday, in attacks that killed at least four civilians, the Observatory said. Rebels fired several hundred rockets and projectiles into at least seven government-held neighborhoods, with the army returning fire and regime aircraft carrying out raids. Fighting resumed yesterday morning before dawn on pro-government areas of the Ashrafiyeh and Khaldiyeh neighborhoods in the city’s north and western sectors, the monitor said. Abdel Rahman said hundreds of shells fell on both government- and rebel-held areas of the city, in what he said was Aleppo’s “worst night” since 2012, when rebels first attacked.
One Aleppo resident, a 23-year-old student who gave her name as Sahar, said fighting had been “intensive”. “We are used to the sound of explosions but yesterday there were so many. We heard the blasts but because they were coming from everywhere we didn’t know where the shells were falling,” she told AFP by telephone.— AFP