Syrian army seizes key Aleppo area

One rebel official denied the report that al-Sakhour had fallen, an advance that would cut the rebel-held eastern districts of Aleppo in two, while another said the situation was not yet clear. 

The Observatory said rebels had lost control of more than a third of eastern Aleppo in recent days. 

Citing a military source, Syrian state TV said the army and its allies had seized the entire Sakhour area and were working to clear it of mines. Backed by allied militiamen, the army has been  advancing into eastern Aleppo from the northeast since last week, making steady gains over the weekend. 

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

“In the coming hours, the rest of the northern sector will be taken,” the fighter told Reuters, declining to be identified because he is not an official spokesman. 

Capturing rebel-held eastern Aleppo would be the biggest victory for President Bashar al-Assad since the start of the Syrian uprising in 2011. Aleppo is the most  important urban stronghold of the uprising. 

Observatory Director Rami Abdulrahman said government forces were now in effective control of a swathe of eastern Aleppo stretching north from the al-Sakhour neighbourhood, having seized a third of eastern Aleppo in recent days. “It is the biggest defeat for the opposition in Aleppo since 2012,” he told Reuters. 

Thousands uprooted in east Aleppo as Syrian army advances 

Several thousand residents of rebel-held eastern Aleppo fled shifting frontlines, residents and a monitor said, after a rapid advance by the Syrian army and allied forces that rebels fear could split their most important urban stronghold in two. 

The army and its allies took control on Saturday of the large Hanano housing district, on the northeast frontline of the besieged eastern part of Aleppo. On Sunday they said they had captured the neighbouring district, Jabal Badro.