Rebel factions in and around Aleppo have been preparing to launch a counteroffensive to try and break the government’s suffocating siege off Aleppo’s eastern-held neighbourhoods for several weeks. The area has been subjected to a ferocious campaign of aerial attacks by Russian and Syrian government warplanes, and hundreds of people have been killed in recent weeks, according to opposition activists and trapped residents. Rebels opened a corridor to the east for the month of August after pro-government forces first applied a blockade in July, but they were not able to hold it as the government and its Russian ally pounded the gap with artillery and airstrikes. Aleppo, Syria’s biggest pre-war city, has become the main theater of conflict between President Bashar al-Assad backed by Iran, Russia and Shi’ite militias, and Sunni rebels including groups supported by Turkey, Gulf monarchies and the United States. Monday’s attack began with rebels detonating three vehicle-borne explosives against government positions to the city’s south-west and attacking with hundreds of rockets, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. Jabhet Fateh al-Sham fighters carried out three suicide car bombings targeting regime forces in the southwestern outskirts of Aleppo, according to the SOHR, which said there were many killed and wounded from the bombings but could not provide an exact number yet. Ammar Sakkar, the military spokesman for the powerful Fastaqim faction inside the city, said “all the revolutionary factions, without exception, are participating in the battle.”

He said hundreds of advance fighters were participating in the attack, adding that the total number of participants was “much higher.”
More than 15 civilians are reported killed and another 100 injured as Syria's Army of Conquest and other jihadist rebels launch an offensive to break the government-led siege on eastern Aleppo.