Violence persists in Syria despite truce

If they succeed in closing the road off completely, the rebels could lose one of their most-prized strongholds.

Syria’s military declared the three-day “regime of calm” – a term it uses to denote a temporary truce – on Wednesday to cover the Eid al-Fitr holiday celebrated by Muslims at the end of the fasting month of Ramadan.

Rebels said they were fighting to retake lost positions and re-secure the road.

In a multi-pronged offensive, Syrian government forces and their allies pushed into an area north of the city of Aleppo on Thursday, threatening a key supply line for the city’s opposition-held quarters and setting off intense clashes with rebels, activists said. But Thursday’s advance brings government forces the closest so far to the road, making it even easier to hit and effectively cutting off the opposition-held sector of the city near the Turkish border.

Rebel group Jaish al Islam said four of its fighters were killed trying to stop the army from cutting the Castello Road, the only route into rebel-held areas of Syria’s second city. Its capture brings the Syrian government closer to its long-standing objective of encircling rebel-held areas of the northern city.

Aleppo, Syria’s pre-war commercial capital, has been divided since mid-2012 when rebels seized the east of the city confining government forces to the west and has been one of the main battlegrounds of the civil war ever since.

An estimated 200,000 people still live in the rebel-controlled parts of the city, which are regularly bombarded by government warplanes.

“All factions sent reinforcements and are trying to take back the positions taken by the regime, but the situation is very bad”.

US Secretary of State John Kerry on Wednesday welcomed the 72-hour Eid ceasefire and said he was working with Russian Federation and others to try to transform it into a lasting truce.

Syria’s state-run news agency said rebels shelled a government neighbourhood of Aleppo on Wednesday, killing three people, while the anti-government Aleppo Media Center reported that at least two people were killed in government airstrikes and shelling on rebel-held neighbourhoods of the contested city. The group said it is battling alongside other fighters to regain control of the farms.

The Eid truce was the first to be declared across Syria since the one brokered in February by global diplomats to facilitate talks to end the five-year-old civil war.

According to the Syrian army, a “terrorist” group had tried to attack army positions in the area, and that its forces had thwarted the assault and taken control over the southern al-Malah Farms alongside the Castello Road.

Last month, Assad’s allies in the Iranian-backed Lebanese group Hezbollah said they would transfer troops to the Aleppo area. The group’s leader said the defense of Aleppo was tantamount to the defense of Damascus. Groups fighting under the banner of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) say however that they control the rebel-held part of the city.