Syria’s rebel-held, northwestern Idlib province came under heavy bombardment Sunday, activists reported, as rebels and pro-government forces battled for control of the nearby city of Aleppo.
Much of the fighting has been marked by indiscriminate shelling, missile attacks, and aerial bombardment, killing scores of civilians across Idlib and Aleppo. The rebels do not have an air force.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported 26 airstrikes on Sunday across Idlib, one of the last remaining opposition bastions. Observatory head Rami Abdurrahman said Russian and government airstrikes on the province have intensified since rebels launched a campaign from Idlib to break a government siege of Aleppo’s opposition districts on July 31. The strikes have killed 122 civilians, he said.
Another 327 civilians, including 126 children, have been killed in fighting in Aleppo province, according to the Observatory, which monitors both sides of the conflict and gathers information from a network of activists inside Syria. The toll includes 126 people killed by rebel shelling of government-held parts of Aleppo city.
Heavy fighting took place in different sectors of Aleppo on Sunday as rebels assaulted two government strongholds in the city’s northwest and south, a monitor of the war said.
Fighting for control of Aleppo, split between its government-held west and rebel-held eastern neighborhoods, has intensified in recent weeks causing hundreds of deaths and depriving many civilians of power, water and vital supplies.
Insurgents including Islamist militant groups detonated car bombs before launching an attack on the Jamiat al-Zahraa district, an army base and residential district, the Observatory said.
Rebel groups then attacked the army’s positions in a cement factory on the city’s southwest, adjacent to the mouth of a corridor into opposition-held east Aleppo that insurgents had opened up a week ago, breaking a government siege.
Earlier in the day, the Syrian army and its allies captured some buildings in the southwestern 1070 housing development, also located near the entrance to the rebel corridor into Aleppo. Aleppo is one of the bastions of the rebellion to oust Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
