Syrian government forces have recaptured all of the areas taken by rebel fighters in a recent assault intended to break the regime siege on eastern Aleppo, a monitor said Saturday. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the army had recaptured key areas including the western district of Dahiyet al-Assad and the village of Minyan outside the city.
Regime forces also advanced south of the city, seizing two areas from the rebels. The reversals undo all of the progress made during a recent push by opposition fighters, including former al Qaeda affiliate Fateh al-Sham front, as they tried to end a government siege on the east of Aleppo city.
Government forces surrounded the city's rebel-held east in July, severing the last supply line into opposition neighbourhoods and imposing a blockade that has led to food and fuel shortages. Rebels have tried several times to break the siege, succeeding briefly in August, but no aid has entered east Aleppo since July.
The monitor said that more than 450 fighters and civilians had been killed since the rebels began their latest bid to break the siege on October 28. The dead include 215 Syrian and foreign opposition fighters, including some who carried out suicide bomb attacks, and 143 regime forces. Nearly 100 civilians have also been killed, the majority of them in government-held west Aleppo where 30 children were among those killed in waves of rebel rocket fire.