Rebels fighting for Syrian City of Aleppo

A rebel alliance and Syrian government forces have been locked in a battle in and around Aleppo city with President Bashar al-Assad’s regime seeking to repel major offensive with heavy air strikes.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that hundreds of rockets and missiles were fired by rebels into government-held areas in a series of simultaneous attacks on several districts, reported the BBC.

The groups, under the name Ansar al-Sharia, say they are aiming to “liberate” the city of Aleppo, once an important industrial and commercial hub.

The state-run news agency SANA said government troops in Aleppo and its outskirts have killed dozens of “terrorists”, a term used by the regime to identify Syrian rebels.

Syrians walk amidst the rubble in search for survivors following a reported air strike by Syrian government forces in the Maysar neighbourhood of the northern Syrian city of Aleppo on February 7, 2015.

Elsewhere in Syria, The United States and its allies have conducted 24 air strikes against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria on Thursday, the coalition leading the operations said in a statement on Friday.

Losing Aleppo would further restrict Assad’s sway to western areas of the country near the border with Lebanon, where he has sought to shore up his control with the help of the Iranian-backed Lebanese group Hezbollah.

Three years of fighting have devastated the city and many residents fled long ago.

A report released in May by Amnesty worldwide accused the Assad government of committing “unthinkable atrocities” in Aleppo, particularly in regards to its use of barrel bombs which it says cause indiscriminate harm to civilians. He later said the insurgents were making headway in a part of western Aleppo that would get them closer to the heart of the city. It has been partitioned into areas of government and insurgent control since 2012.

Speaking to ARA News in Aleppo, media activist Wael Mohammed said that the armed opposition fighters advanced in the fronts of ar-Rashideen and Halab Jadida districts, and targeted pro-regime security checkpoints with heavy machine guns and mortars.

The coordinated rebel attack, which includes the al-Qaeda-affiliate al-Nusra Front, was launched late the previous day.

Overnight, anti-regime forces also attacked an army outpost at the entrance to Zabadani near Damascus, according to the Observatory. The battle surprised the regime, but also surprised more moderate rebels, some trained in a covert USA program.

More than 230,000 people have been killed in Syria since the country s conflict began in March 2011.