Syrian rebels caution civilians in Aleppo about offensive

BEIRUT — A leading northern Syrian rebel coalition warned civilians in Aleppo to stay away from government positions around the contested city early Sunday as rebels and pro-government forces clashed along the city’s outskirts.

Fighting broke out along the city’s southern neighbourhoods and countryside and its central districts after a cease-fire to allow rebels and civilians to evacuate the city’s eastern quarters expired Saturday night. No evacuations were seen during the three-day window arranged by the Russian and Syrian military commands.

Government artillery shelled the strategically important village of Khan Touman, which overlooks the highway connecting Aleppo and government-held cities in the centre of the country, the activist-run Shahba Press reported on Sunday. Rebels led by Al Qaeda-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 Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported incremental advances for pro-government forces against Al Qaeda-linked Fatah Al Sham Front militants in the city’s southern countryside.

Al Manar TV, run by the Lebanese militant group Hizbollah, broadcast footage of tanks and fighters advancing under heavy fire along a ridge reportedly in the Aleppo countryside. Hizbollah is fighting alongside Syrian President Bashar Assad’s military.

A spokesman for the Nour El Din 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 rebels would not target civilians in Aleppo’s government-held districts, but warned of collateral damage from the anticipated operations.

The fighting ran in parallel with renewed clashes further away from the city between Turkish-backed opposition forces and Syrian Kurdish forces over territory formerly held by the Daesh group. The activist-run Aleppo Media Centre said Turkish forces struck over 50 Kurdish positions on Sunday alone. The US 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, under orders from Ankara to clear the border area of Daesh fighters and US-backed Syrian Kurdish forces linked to Turkey’s own outlawed Kurdish insurgency. The Turkish government considers both to be terrorist groups.