DAMASCUS —  Syrian armed forces have taken strategic ground around Aleppo this week, residents and state media said on Wednesday, July 9, squeezing the main rebel supply line into the city after months of battlefield gains by Damascus.

The government advance, after close to two years of stalemate, was bolstered by fighters from Hizbullah, an ally of President Bashar al-Assad, according to sources close to the Lebanese militant group.

In 2012, rebels pushed into Aleppo, once Syria’s commercial hub, from the north and took districts in the heart of the city. Since then, the army has held the west and south of Aleppo but has been unable to dislodge opposition fighters.

Syrian state news agency SANA said that the army had taken control of an industrial complex in northeast Aleppo on Sunday. Control of the complex means rebels are now hemmed in on three sides by government forces and can only resupply neighborhoods in the city through a northern corridor.

“There is a four-kilometer-(2.5-mile)-wide area in the north that is controlled by the opposition now,” said a resident opposition activist from Aleppo. “If the regime can capture one last street, they will be able to besiege the city.”

The advance follows months of incremental gains by pro-government forces. Assad has demonstrated a tenacious hold on power after three years of brutal civil war and is due to be sworn in for a new term on July 17.

In May, troops broke a year-long rebel blockage on Aleppo’s main prison after heavy fighting with the Nusra Front, al-Qaeda’s official affiliate in Syria, and other Islamist militant brigades in the rebel ranks.

A diplomat in the region said the Syrian government “feels like they are winning Aleppo. The regime has worked strategically since 2013 on regaining Aleppo, cutting the supply line.”

The diplomat added that the army advance in Aleppo had been deliberately slow to give it time to consolidate control over recovered areas. “They haven’t lost any areas they have taken back. It is not a battle of back-and-forth.”

Political sources close to Hizbullah said that it had embedded advisers with Syrian army units in Aleppo and recently sent fighters – battlefield-trained during skirmishes with Israel – to the front lines in Aleppo.

Hizbullah fighters helped Assad’s forces retake rebel-held areas along the Lebanese border, but their presence in Aleppo, far from Lebanon, marks a significant expansion of the Shi’a group’s area of operations.

Disparate rebel groups in Aleppo have also been weakened by infighting this year, benefiting Assad. The Islamic State is now the strongest militia in eastern Syria and has also taken areas from other rebel units in Aleppo province.

Veteran United Nations official Staffan de Mistura, a former U.N. special envoy to Afghanistan and Iraq, will replace Lakhdar Brahimi as the international mediator seeking an end to Syria’s civil war, diplomats said on Wednesday.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told reporters later on Wednesday that consultations were still continuing on the appointment and he hoped to make an announcement “very soon.”

Algerian diplomat Brahimi stepped down on May 31, frustrated by global deadlock over how to end the three year civil war in Syria. He had long threatened to quit, just as his predecessor – former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan – did in 2012.

Annan resigned after six months as the U.N. and Arab League joint special representative on Syria, accusing the U.N. Security Council of failing to unite behind efforts to end the fighting that has now killed more than 160,000 people.

Syria’s Western-backed opposition, the National Coalition, elected Hadi al-Bahra, chief negotiator at the Geneva peace talks, as its new president on Wednesday after a three-day meeting in Istanbul.

The United States and other key powers have designated the National Coalition as the main body representing the opposition to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, but it has little power inside Syria where disparate militant groups outside its control hold ground.

Bahra, a U.S-trained industrial engineer, has close ties to regional powerhouse Saudi Arabia, as did his predecessor Ahmad Jarba, who stood down after serving the maximum two six-month terms.

“We will not give up the fundamentals of the revolution and our demands are freedom and human dignity,” Bahra told a news conference in Istanbul on Wednesday evening.

Bahra’s election is unlikely to have any impact on the situation in Syria or within opposition ranks for now, though France – the first Western country to back the Coalition – welcomed his appointment and said it was still striving for a political resolution of the conflict.

The United States also applauded Bahra’s selection. “We look to President-elect Bahra and other new leaders to reach out to all Syrian communities and to strengthen unity amongst moderate opposition institutions,” U.S. State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said in a statement.  

 -Reuters, TAAN