Syrian regime forces roll back rebel gains in Aleppo

Residents said chlorine gas had been used in the attack, but the monitor could not confirm this.

Homs was one of the Syrian cities where the 2011 uprising against President Bashar al-Assad first turned into an armed insurgency. We consider the proposal deeply flawed on humanitarian grounds and consider it [a] warning for the International Syria Support Group (ISSG) to urgently step up efforts to end the use of brutal siege tactics and illegal attacks on civilians.

But the Syrian army said it had repelled the assault, inflicting heavy casualties on the rebels. 35 of them were children.

It said all six facilities hit between July 23 and July 31 were major hospitals in Aleppo governorate, including a referral hospital just outside opposition-held eastern Aleppo and a paediatric clinic inside the city where four infants died after their oxygen supply was cut.

“Terrorists are trying to prevent the population from fleeing the eastern part of the city of Aleppo the best they can, threatening to shoot civilians or publicly execute them.

Russian and Syrian forces say they have been operating seven so-called humanitarian corridors, allowing hundreds of people to leave the besieged area peacefully.

SANA also said rebel fighters surrendered themselves to the authorities.

The corridors, he said, “need to be guaranteed by all parties in the area”.

In Syria’s north, a US-backed, Kurdish-led fighting force managed to secure control of 40 percent of Manbij, a vital satellite for the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) group’s de facto capital in Raqqa, according to the SOHR.

Later on Tuesday, Syrian state news agency SANA returned the accusation of chemical weapon use, reporting that rebels launched gas-filled rockets on a government-held area of Aleppo, killing five people and causing breathing difficulties for others.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group confirmed that a part of the facility was captured. The shootdown is the biggest officially acknowledged loss for Russian army since it started military campaign in Syria.

A doctor from Idlib province told AFP on Wednesday that those affected had been treated and sent home.

Although the U.S isn’t ready to officially pronounce the incident a chemical attack, however, there is confidence that it was indeed a chemical attack, a top US official said to CNN on Tuesday evening.

The American government has yet to okay the mobilization of the rebels, to the dismay of some of the countries involved, the official said.

While burning tires is hardly a longterm air-defense strategy that any military commander would approve, it certainly could complicate Russian and Syrian bombing runs as they fly low and drop unguided munitions. Even if, or when, the government retakes the alleged target stretch of Syria, it will still face the massive task of rebuilding a shattered economy and wrestling back control from militias and profiteers who have built robust patronage networks that rival the traditional hierarchies of the Assad family’s authoritarian rule.