DAMASCUS – The Syrian government has retaken territory around the northern city of Aleppo, the military said on Tuesday, Jan. 14, after two weeks of rebel infighting that has weakened the insurgency against President Bashar al-Assad.

The military advances will give the Syrian government delegation greater leverage at the negotiating table.

An army statement said government forces had pushed out from their base at Aleppo’s international airport, southeast of the city, and were moving towards an industrial complex used as a rebel base and the al-Bab road, needed by insurgents to supply the half of Aleppo under their control.

The Syrian government has retaken territory around the northern city of Aleppo.

It said that government forces, along with militia loyal to Assad, were in “complete control” of the Naqareen, Zarzour, Taaneh and Subeihieh areas along the eastern side of Aleppo, which was the major Arab country’s commercial hub and most populous city before the conflict erupted in 2011.

In the past year, the Syrian government has pushed back at rebels across the country, besieging restive suburbs around the capital and pushing opposition fighters from towns near the Lebanese border and along the road linking Damascus to the coast.

Assad’s forces took ground in central Homs province and his forces regrouped as rebel rivalries grew. While the embattled leader avoided U.S. military strikes by agreeing to give up his chemical arsenal, his forces continue to bomb opposition territory from the air and using long-range artillery. But neither side appears to be able to break the overall deadlock.

While the army has been able to take some towns on the outskirts of Aleppo, rebels have held their ground in the districts of the city they entered in 2012 and the government has not made major advances in the urban areas where opposition fighters are dug in.

Fighting between the al Qaeda-linked Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham and rival Islamists and more moderate rebels have killed hundreds of people over two weeks and shaken ISIS, a militant faction led by foreign jihadists.

But ISIS regrouped and retook much of its stronghold in the eastern city of Raqqa on Sunday from remnants of the Nusra Front, another al Qaeda affiliate although much more Syrian in makeup, and Islamist units called the Islamic Front.

ISIS took control of the town of al-Bab, east of Aleppo, from other rebels on Monday, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group.

The Observatory, which tracks Syria’s war using sources from both sides, said eight fighters from Ahrar al-Sham, a unit within the Islamic Front, were killed by an ISIS car bomb in the western province of Idlib just before midnight on Monday. 

– Reuters, TAAN