Assad forces retake key Aleppo district from rebels, says monitor

Pro-Syrian government forces overran a strategically important district on the southern outskirts of Aleppo on Thursday, rolling back nearly every gain from a major month-long rebel offensive there, a monitor group reports.

The government advance in Ramussa further seals off Aleppo's opposition-held eastern districts which have been under renewed siege since Sunday by forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that government forces and allied fighters "retook full control of the Ramussa district after ferocious clashes with rebels, Islamist fighters, and jihadist groups". 

Observatory head, Rami Abdel Rahman, said the capture came after reinforcements of Iraqi and Iranian pro-government militiamen arrived south of the city earlier this week.

"The regime could not afford to lose this battle, otherwise it would have lost everything," he told AFP.

A coalition of Syrian rebel groups had launched a major assault in Aleppo's southern outskirts on 31 July in a bid to break the government's encirclement of the eastern neighbourhoods. They successfully opened a route into those districts a week later via Ramussa, but government forces have now managed to recapture nearly all that territory.

Abdel Rahman told AFP on Thursday that rebels still hold marginal positions in a residential complex and a school.

An AFP correspondent in the city's east said shops had been struggling since Sunday to secure goods to sell and that prices were sky-rocketing.

Earlier this week, Middle East Eye also reported on residents in Aleppo's southern areas desperately scavenging for food in preparation of supply routes to the city being cut off by the Syrian government. 

The state news agency, SANA, also reported that the government's armed forces advanced south of Aleppo on Thursday.

Once Syria's commercial powerhouse, Aleppo is now a divided city, with rebel groups firing into the government-held west and government and allied Russian warplanes pounding the opposition-controlled east.

On Wednesday, strikes by unidentified aircraft on the eastern Sukkari district killed 11 civilians, according to the Observatory.

Aleppo province, which borders Turkey to the north, is a patchwork of territory held by competing forces in Syria's war: rebels, the government, Kurdish fighters, and militant groups including Islamic State and Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, formerly the Nusra Front.

The Islamic State group's last major position in the province is al-Bab, eyed by rival Kurdish and Arab fighters backed by the US-led coalition and Ankara respectively.

At least 10 civilians were killed in the IS-held town of Taduf, near al-Bab, in air strikes by unidentified aircraft on Wednesday, the Observatory said.

Four IS militants were also killed in the raids and another four bodies have yet to be identified, according to the monitor.