PHOTO: Rebels advance on the 1070 housing complex, southwest of Aleppo city, on Sunday

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Syria Video Feature: The Rebel Offensive Near Aleppo

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UPDATE 1600 GMT: Rebels claim they have taken the village of al-Mashrifah, also known as al-Shurfa, in their continuing advance south of Aleppo.

The village is near the regime’s artillery base at Ramouseh.

Pro-opposition activists are claiming that the base is now surrounded on three sides and that the rebels have “fire control” over the supply road from Ramouseh.

The rebel faction Jaish al-Islam claims that six tanks have been destroyed and three captured. It also says 12 regime troops have been captured.

A map, courtesy of @archicivilians, of the current situation with rebel-held territory in green and regime areas in red:

Point-of-view footage from a rebel T-62 tank:

UPDATE 0845 GMT: A regime soldier has acknowledged that rebels have cut the Syrian military’s supply route through Ramouseh, southwest of Aleppo.

Ivan Sidorenko, a prominent pro-Assad activist on social media, passed on the soldier’s message:

However, Sidorenko later amended the statement with another supposed message, from a different soldier in Aleppo city, that the Ramouseh road is still open.

ORIGINAL ENTRY: Syria’s rebels have taken territory in a sudden, widespread offensive to break the regime siege of Aleppo city.

Defying the Russian airstrikes that have been essential to pro-Assad forces, the rebels launched ground operations on Sunday across a 20-km (12.5-mile) front, with attacks both to the north of Aleppo — where the Syrian military and its allies have cut the last route into opposition-held areas of Syria’s largest city — and to the south.

See Syria Video Feature: The Rebel Offensive Near Aleppo
Syria Developing: Rebel Offensive Near Aleppo

The most significant gains were to the southwest including the capture of two villages, a school where served as a staging area for Iranian and Hezbollah fighters as well as the Syrian military, and a large housing complex.

The Fatah Halab operations room claimed 103 pro-Assad regime troops were killed and 29 are missing.

Rebels are attacking a heavily-fortified artillery base and the area of Hamdaniyah. Capture of those positions would break the siege which was imposed three weeks ago with the pro-Assad advances near the al-Castello Road to the north of Aleppo.

To hinder Russian-regime airstrikes, opposition supporters burned tires throughout their districts, covering Aleppo in thick black smoke. The warplanes continued to operate, attacking a number of positions in and near the city.

The Syrian military confirmed the rebel offensive on State media but denied that they lost the al-Hikmah school — a claim undermined by the attacks of its air force on the complex — and insisted that they pushed back attacks on the artillery base. The pro-regime Al-Masdar News asserted, “Russian Air Force Emerges in Southern Aleppo to Help Drive Back Jihadists”, following the rebel capture of the 1070 al-Hamadaniyah housing complex.

A military source in Aleppo City told Al-Masdar News that the Russian Air Force joined the battle for southern Aleppo after the jihadist rebels reached the Syrian Arab Army’s (SAA) front-lines inside the 1070 Housing Project tonight.

The source added that the Russian Air Force has bombarded several sites under jihadist control, including the Al-‘Amariyah, Hikmah School, Al-Ramouseh, and Sheikh Sa’eed.

Much of Russia’s English-language State media, including RT, are silent about the offensive, but Sputnik tries to counter with the declaration — distorting both the wide range of rebel factions in the assaults and their success — “Syrian Forces Repel al-Nusra in a Major Offensive Marred by Suicide Attacks“. The outlet showed a video from last week’s pro-Assad advance in western Aleppo city and clumsily tried to claim it was from Sunday’s “defeat” of the rebels.

Rebels Down Russian Helicopter in Idlib Province, 5 Killed

The Kremlin has acknowledged that rebels shot down a Russian Mi-8 transport helicopter in Idlib Province in northwest Syria on Monday.

The statement said three crew and two officers from Russia’s “Center for Reconciliation” were killed. It said the helicopter had delivered “humanitarian supplies” to Aleppo city and was returning to the Russian base in Latakia Province in western Syria.

An identity card retrieved from the wreckage indicates that one of the dead was a woman.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov said:

Those on board the helicopter were killed, as we learned from the Defense Ministry’s report. They died heroically as [the crew] tried to divert the helicopter to minimize casualties on the ground.

Activists said the helicopter crashed near the town of Saraqeb. Footage of the crash scene:

Doctors on “Everyday Horrors” in Aleppo’s Hospitals

The New York Times talks to doctors who have worked amid the everyday crisis in Aleppo’s hospital, crowded with victims and operating under threat of Russian-regime air attacks.

One of the testimonies, from a Syrian-American volunteer, Dr. Samer Attar:

[He] recalled leaning over three children crowded onto a single gurney to perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation on a boy, about 10 years old, who was not breathing, one of his legs blown open.

“It was mass chaos, patients on the floor, a man with his foot on top of his belly,” Dr. Attar said. “The chief surgeon said, ‘I need you to focus on this man bleeding to death, because he’s still conscious, breathing, and has a better chance of making it.’”

As painful as that was, Dr. Attar said, he was awed by the doctor’s calm efficiency.

“These are everyday decisions for them,” he added. “These are not isolated attacks like the horrible things” — terrorist attacks in places like Bangladesh and Nice, France — “that are happening all over the world. In Aleppo, these bombings are happening every day.”

See also Syria 1st-Hand: “It is Hell” — An American Surgeon Inside Aleppo
Syria 1st-Hand: The Hell of the Field Hospitals

Pro-Assad Airstrikes Destroy Another Hospital, Reportedly Kill 10

Pro-Assad airstrikes have destroyed yet another hospital, this time in southern Syria.

The al-Redwan hospital in the town of Jasim in Daraa Province was attacked on Sunday. The facility was supported by international organization Médecins Sans Frontières.

A Canada-based charity said 10 people were killed, including four women, two children, a pharmacist, and a nurse.

Warning — Graphic Footage:

Russian and regime aircraft have destroyed or damaged scores of hospitals and other medical facilities since last September. In the past 10 days alone, they have struck at least 10 in and near Aleppo city, knocking out the last fully-operational hospital in western Aleppo Province.

There are also reports that the Hoor clinic in western Aleppo Province was struck on Sunday. An attack on a lab in Aleppo city — the third on the facility in four days — reportedly killed two personnel.