Since July 17,
Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneckal-Assad
Before going into the family business Pencilneck was an eye doctor. If he'd stuck with it he'd have had a good practice by now...
's forces have surrounded rebel-held districts of Aleppo city, one of the main front lines in the conflict ravaging the country since 2011.
Loyalists forces cut the Castello Road, the main supply line into rebel-held neighborhoods in the north of the city.
Now snuffies have attacked from the south, a region divided between loyalists backed by Iranian fighters and Hizbullah
...
Party of God, a Leb militia inspired, founded, funded and directed by Iran. Hizbullah refers to itself as
The Resistanceand purports to defend Leb against Israel, with whom it has started and lost one disastrous war to date, though it did claim victory...
on the one hand, and Syrian and foreign jihadists allied with rebel groups on the other.
On Sunday, Islamist groups such as the influential Ahrar al-Sham
...a Syria jihadi group made up of Islamists and salafists, not that there's that much difference, formed into a brigade. They make up the main element of the Islamic Front but they don't profess adoration of al-Qaeda and they've been fighting (mainly for survival) against the Islamic State. Their leadership was wiped out at a single blow by a suicide kaboom at a crowded basement meeting in September, 2014...
and jihadists including from the former al-Nusra
...formally Jabhat an-Nusrah li-Ahli sh-Sham (Support Front for the People of the Levant), also known as al-Qaeda in the Levant. They aim to establish a pan-Arab caliphate. Not the same one as the Islamic State, though .. ...
Front -- rebranded Jabhat Fateh al-Sham after breaking from al-Qaeda -- said they had begun a battle to try to reopen a new supply route.
Fateh al-Sham launched two car kabooms against regime positions in suburban Rashidin in southwestern Aleppo and fighting also raged in the early evening, the Syrian Observatory of Human Rights said.
Three children were among 11 civilians killed in rebel rocket attacks launched from Rashidin on the government-controlled district of Hamdaniyeh in western Aleppo, the Observatory said.
Other attacks focused on southern parts of the city towards the regime-controlled suburb of Ramussa, the Britannia-based monitor reported.
"It will be a long and difficult battle," said Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman. "The army is supported by a large number of Iranians and fighters from Hizbullah, not to mention the Russian planes."
Forces from Leb's Shiite group have been fighting alongside Assad's men in Syria for years, and Russia at the end of September last year began a campaign of air strikes in support of loyalist fighters.
In Aleppo city itself, regime forces bombarded rebel-held districts Sunday despite the announcement by Damascus and Moscow of humanitarian corridors to allow civilians and rebels ready to surrender to leave.
On Saturday, government media reported that dozens of civilians and rebels had left besieged eastern Aleppo through humanitarian corridors, but residents there and rebels dismissed the claims as "lies."
Elsewhere, at least nine non-combatants were killed Sunday in an air strike that hit a makeshift hospital at Jassem in the southern province of Daraa.
The International Rescue Committee, which supported the facility, called on the U.N. Security Council "to act in defense of the most basic principles of the U.N."
"The bombing of hospitals is never justified. All those involved must be held to account," said IRC chief David Miliband in a statement.