Syria government forces capture key Aleppo district

The Syrian army and its alliesdrove rebels from a strategically important area of easternAleppo on Monday, the army and the Syrian Observatory for HumanRights said, in an accelerating attack that threatens to crushthe opposition in Aleppo.

One rebel official denied the report that al-Sakhour hadfallen, an advance that would cut the rebel-held easterndistricts of Aleppo in two, while another said the situation wasnot yet clear. The Observatory said rebels had lost control ofmore than a third of eastern Aleppo in recent days.

Citing a military source, Syrian state TV said the army andits allies had seized the entire Sakhour area and were workingto clear it of mines. Backed by allied militiamen, the army hasbeen advancing into eastern Aleppo from the northeast since lastweek, making steady gains over the weekend.

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A fighter on the government side in Aleppo said the army andits allies had now driven a wedge through eastern Aleppo,leaving a corridor for rebels to quit the northern part for thesouth.

"In the coming hours, the rest of the northern sector willbe taken," the fighter told Reuters, declining to be identifiedbecause he is not an official spokesman.

Capturing rebel-held eastern Aleppo would be the biggestvictory for President Bashar al-Assad since the start of theSyrian uprising in 2011. Aleppo is the most important urbanstronghold of the uprising.

Observatory Director Rami Abdulrahman said government forceswere now in effective control of a swathe of eastern Aleppostretching north from the al-Sakhour neighbourhood, havingseized a third of eastern Aleppo in recent days.

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"It is the biggest defeat for the opposition in Aleppo since2012," he told Reuters. Abdulrahman said the army and its allieswere now in control of an entire swathe of eastern Aleppostretching north from al-Sakhour.

Part of the northern area was seized by the Kurdish YPGmilitia, which is hostile to the rebel groups in eastern Aleppoand advanced into the rebel-held territory from theKurdish-controlled Sheikh Maqsoud district, Abdulrahman said.

Backed by the Russian air force, the Syrian army and itsallies have been gradually closing in on rebel-held easternAleppo this year, besieging it before launching a fierce assaultin September.