BEIRUT: Syria’s army and allied militia fighters seized the only road into the rebel-held part of Aleppo on Sunday, tightening a siege around opposition areas of the northern city, which President Bashar al-Assad has pledged to recapture.

Aleppo has been a major battlefield of Syria’s civil war since rebels swept into it in the summer of 2012, and an opposition defeat there would mark their biggest setback in five years of conflict.

Nearly two weeks ago, pro-government forces advanced to positions overlooking the road, effectively cutting it off — although some trucks still braved the hazardous route last week, an opposition official in Aleppo said.

Four rebel sources said that the army, backed by militias and fighters from Lebanon’s Hezbollah, advanced to the road itself on Sunday. “They’ve reached the road, it’s completely cut,” Zakaria Malahifji of the Aleppo-based rebel group Fastaqim told Reuters.

The other Aleppo-based rebel sources, including members of the Levant Front and Nur Al Din Zinki armed groups, confirmed that pro-government forces had reached the road. “It’s a disaster, but we’ll see how the battle ends. I don’t know whether they will push them back or it will stay like this,” Malahifji said.

A local rebel command centre warned people not to use the road after several residents trying to flee in minibuses and cars came under fire from pro-government forces, rebels said.

Sixteen rebel fighters were killed in the clashes around the Castello Road and nearby districts on Sunday, Syrian state media and the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. They did not give figures for losses on the government side.

Fighting continued through the day and one rebel group, Jaysh al-Nasr, said the insurgents retook some territory.

But another rebel commander said the government had launched an “all-out offensive”, using heavy artillery, planes and tanks, on the last rebel supply route, saying it marked the start of a complete siege of the opposition in Aleppo.

“We are now besieged and you don’t have any tunnel or any strategic stockpile that lasts for long ... only for two or three months to feed 300,000 people,” the commander, who asked not to be identified, told Reuters.

Published in Dawn, July 18th, 2016