Syrian rebels "liberated" several districts of the northern city of Aleppo...For centuries, Aleppo was Greater Syria's largest city and the Ottoman Empire's third, after Constantinople and Cairo. Although relatively close to Damascus in distance, Aleppans regard Damascenes as country cousins...
on Monday, a Free Syrian Army front man in the country's commercial hub said.
"This is the first step towards the liberation of the city," Colonel Abdel Jabbar al-Oqaidi told Agence La Belle France Presse via Skype, adding that fierce festivities continued on the edges of the Salah el-Din, Shaar, Hanano City, Tareq al-Bab and Sheikh Najjar neighborhoods.
"Regime forces continue to pound these (captured) districts from the outskirts with tanks and helicopters," said Oqaidi.
The same front man had announced earlier "the start of an operation aimed at liberating Aleppo from the blood-stained hands of Assad's gangs," referring to loyalists of Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir
Pencilneckal-Assad.
One of the last of the old-fashioned hereditary iron-fisted fascist dictators...