Amateur video published online on Friday purports to show Syrian rebels storming a major artillery base in the northern city of Aleppo that the Syrian army said it had repelled.
The video purports to show Syrian rebel fighters moving along dusty fields as they fire their weapons before reaching buildings in the artillery base where armored vehicles were left abandoned.
Another video shows aerial shots of fire emerging from the ground and dark clouds of smoke filling the sky in what was said to be the Aleppo artillery base.
Fighters from a coalition of Islamist rebel groups called “Jaish al Fateh” that includes Jabhat Fateh al Sham, the former al Qaeda-affiliated Nusra Front, Ahrar al Sham and other smaller groups, said they had taken the main fortress-like artillery academy in the Ramousah quarter in southwestern Aleppo.
They were now fighting to take the other military academies adjoining the artillery base that are among the country's largest.
But the army said it had foiled the attack on the artillery base and two major military academies.
The artillery base is almost 2 km from the besieged opposition area. It has a huge supply of ammunitions and is used regularly to shell parts of the city held by opposition forces.
The rebels are trying to break through a strip of government-controlled territory to reconnect their encircled sector of eastern Aleppo with a swathe of insurgent territory in the west of Syria, effectively breaking the siege.
For more details, watch the full report in the video above