The Syrian army says it's taken a strategic district of Aleppo in what would mark the most important advance in the divided city by Damascus and its allies in weeks, but rebels say the battle is not over.
The 1070 Apartments district is located on the southwestern outskirts of Aleppo and lies alongside the government's corridor into the parts of the city that it controls.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based group that reports on the war, said government forces and their allies had seized full control of 1070 Apartments, calling it the most significant gain by the government in Aleppo since September.
A Syrian military source said the army and allied forces were in complete control of the area and surrounding hills.
A military media unit run by the Damascus-allied Hezbollah carried a similar report, but officials in two rebel groups fighting in Aleppo said insurgent forces are still trying to fight back.
Yasser Alyousef from the political office of the Nour al-Din al-Zinki rebel group said rebels had recovered positions they had lost on Monday.
Syrian government forces backed by allied militias and Russian air power launched a major assault on rebel-held eastern Aleppo in September after besieging the area, which the United Nations says is home to 275,000 people.
On October 29, rebels counter-attacked in a bid to break the siege, targeting government-held western districts of Aleppo in an offensive that included Islamist militants and rebels fighting under the Free Syrian Army banner.
But their progress slowed after early gains.
Russia says its air force has been observing a moratorium on air strikes on rebel-held eastern Aleppo since October 18. The Observatory and emergency workers in eastern Aleppo said heavy air strikes had killed hundreds of people, and hit hospitals and other civilian facilities prior to that.
Russia is preparing to resume air strikes around Aleppo "in coming hours", the Interfax news agency quoted a source in the Russian Defence Ministry as saying on Tuesday.
