Syria army, foreign-backed militants fight in Aleppo
Syrian army forces and foreign-backed Takfiri militants are reportedly engaged in fierce exchanges of fire in Syria’s northwestern city of Aleppo.
The Britain-based so-called Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) announced that 21 militants and nine government troopers lost their lives during fighting for control of a key supply route north of Aleppo, which is situated about 310 kilometers (193 miles) north of the capital, Damascus, on Sunday.
Rami Abdel Rahman, who heads SOHR, stated that units of Syrian army have made an advance at Handarat area, just north of Aleppo.
The development comes a day after Ramzi Ezzedine Ramzi, the deputy to the UN special envoy to Syria, Staffan de Mistura, touched down in Damascus to hold a series of negotiations with Syrian officials and militants with a view to ending the fighting in Aleppo.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has expressed his willingness to discuss the plan to cease the skirmishes in the flashpoint city, which has been divided into militant- and government-held territories since July 2012.
Meanwhile, intense clashes have been reported around the Wadi Deif and Hamidiyeh bases outside the town of Maaret al-Numan in Syria’s northwestern province of Idlib.
Syria has been grappling with a deadly crisis since March 2011. Western powers and their regional allies – especially Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey – are the main supporters of the militants operating inside Syria.
More than 200,000 people have died so far in the conflict in Syria, according to UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Zeid al-Hussein.
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2014/12/14/390239/syria-troops-engage-militants-in-aleppo/