‘Battle for Aleppo in final phase’

ALEPPO — The crucial battle for Aleppo entered its "final phase" on Monday after Syrian rebels retreated into a small pocket of their former bastion in the face of new army advances.

President Bashar Assad's forces held more than 90 per cent of the one-time opposition stronghold of east Aleppo, a monitor and military official said, and appeared on the verge of retaking the entire city.

A Syrian military official in Aleppo told AFP the "operation in eastern neighbourhoods is entering its final phase", as fierce clashes were reported in the few districts still under rebel control.

The fall of Aleppo would be the worst rebel defeat since Syria's conflict began in 2011, and leave the government in control of the country's five major cities.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group reported that the army had captured southeast Aleppo's large Sheikh Saeed district.

Syrian official media confirmed Sheikh Saeed had been retaken, with state television showing what it said was live footage from the neighbourhood.

The rebels withdrew from six more districts in the face of advancing government troops, the Britain-based observatory said.

The retreat leaves opposition fighters confined to just a handful of neighbourhoods in southeast Aleppo, the largest of them Sukkari and Mashhad.

 'A total collapse' 

"The battle of Aleppo has reached its end. It is just a matter of a small period of time... it's a total collapse," said observatory Director Rami Abdel Rahman.

In the Mashhad neighbourhood, residents fleeing the army advance crowded the streets, witnesses said.

Displaced civilians — many hungry after fleeing without food — sat on pavements or lay on the street with nowhere else to go, they said.

An AFP correspondent in the government-held west of Aleppo said the bombardment of rebel areas could be heard and was among the heaviest in recent days.

"The regime is advancing in east Aleppo under gunfire, missiles and shelling," Bassam Mustafa from the political office of the Nureddin Al Zenki rebel group in Aleppo told reporters.

"The fighters [rebels] are retreating under pressure and the situation is very bad," he said.

State television also aired live footage from inside Salhin district, one of the areas fully retaken on Monday, showing widespread destruction.

Buildings were missing entire sections, and roads were littered with rubble and pitted with enormous craters.

Terrified residents have poured out of rebel-held neighbourhoods as the army advanced since beginning its operation on November 15.

The observatory said on Monday another 10,000 people had fled rebel areas in the previous 24 hours, bringing the total number of those who have left — mostly to government-held territory — to 130,000.

Syria’s rebels seized control of east Aleppo in 2012, a year into an uprising that began with anti-government protests but spiralled into a civil war after a regime crackdown.

The war has become a complex multi-front conflict, drawing in proxy powers and extremists such as the Daesh terror group, which on Sunday retook the symbolically important city of Palmyra nine months after being expelled.

Daesh managed to again seize control of Palmyra — where the extremists carried out a campaign of destruction against famed ancient ruins — despite heavy Russian air strikes and the arrival of Syrian troop reinforcements.