Special to WorldTribune.com

NICOSIA — President Bashar Assad is said to have regained control
over most of Syria’s largest city.

Western intelligence sources said Assad’s military, through nightly
ground and daily air operations, has blocked a rebel advance into Aleppo.
They said rebel forces were confined to several neighborhoods on the
outskirts of Aleppo, areas now bereft of residents.

“The [Syrian] Army is taking its time because it has been ordered to
spare the city and not alienate residents,” an intelligence source said.
“The feeling is that the rebels will flee Aleppo or sharply reduce
operations over the next few days.”

The sources said the main Army force assigned to recapture Aleppo has been the 11th Division. They said Assad also deployed the 14th Division, based in the northern city of Qamishli, to isolate the rebels, many of them aligned with Al Qaida.

The two main areas of fighting have been identified as Salah Eddin and Sahour. In Salah Eddin, the sources said, the army has sent special operations forces for nightly operations against rebels. They said rebel locations were reported by residents and passerby.

“The Syrian Army comes in with T-72s [main battle tanks] and BMPs
[armored vehicles], and move through alleyways and shell rebel positions and return,” the source said. “There is no great hurry.”

Sahour represents a bigger challenge to the Army, the sources said. They
said Sahour, in eastern Aleppo, was captured by an Al Qaida-inspired militia
called the Heroes Brigade and believed to have acquired man-portable
surface-to-air missiles. The militia, led by Malik Al Kurdi, was believed to
contain 150 fighters.

“The regime will have to decide what to do with them,” the source said.

The sources said most Aleppo residents have stayed indoors during
the fighting. They said the jihadist fighters, many of them from Libya, were
not welcomed by city residents.

A leading U.S. military analyst, Joseph Holliday, said the regime
committed virtually all of its forces in the north to the Aleppo campaign.
Holliday, a senior researcher at the Institute for the Study of War, said
the rebels were isolating 20 percent of Assad’s remaining combat power.

“The security forces committed virtually all of their Idlib-based
available combat power to the Aleppo fight, leaving behind a skeleton crew
of isolated outposts that the rebels are overrunning one by one,” Holliday
said.

  Al Qaida, Assad forces stop rebel advance in battle for Aleppo, Heroes Brigade, Salah Eddin and Sahour, Syrian Army 11th Division, T-72 main battle tanks