Syrians hit insurgents with air strike

The Syrian air force responded on Friday with heavy bombing to a fresh offensive in the northern city of Aleppo mounted by fundamentalists united in a 13-faction alliance called Ansar al-Sharia.

Air and artillery strikes were carried out against insurgent-held areas as fighting raged on the ground between the army and the alliance, led by al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra.

Ansar al-Sharia (Partisans of Islamic Law) employed heavy weapons in the initial thrust, the most intense since anti-government forces took over eastern quarters of the city in 2012.

Syrian military sources said the attack had been repulsed and more than 100 insurgents killed.

The fall of Aleppo, once Syria’s most populous city and commercial hub, would be a major blow for Damascus. The government still controls about 70 per cent of the city while insurgents hold the rest and a swathe of the eastern Aleppo countryside.

Province of Idlib

Fierce fighting also raged in the Aleppo provincial town of Azaz between Islamic State elements and an alliance of Nusra and western-supported groups which have occupied the northwestern province of Idlib.

Fearing cross-border incursions and random fire, Turkey has reinforced troops and equipment along a stretch of its border with Syria north of Aleppo. Turkish prime minister Ahmet Davutoglu said no orders had been issued to to enter Syria "tomorrow or in the near term", dismissing speculation that Ankara had planned to intervene imminently.

Meanwhile in Palmyra, IS fighters smashed a 2,000-year-old statue of a lion outside the museum and six marble busts confiscated from a smuggler. The destruction of the lion “is the most serious crime they have committed against Palmyra’s heritage”, said director of antiquities Maamoun Abdulkarim.

Senior IS commander Tariq bin Tahar al-Awni al-Harzi, said to be responsible for suicide bombings in Iraq, was killed in a US air strike in northern Syria on June 16th, the Pentagon announced.

Washington offered a $3 million reward for the killing or capture of Harzi, a 33-year-old Tunisian. His death will impact [IS's] ability to integrate foreign terrorist fighters into the Syrian and Iraqi fight,and move people and equipment across the border between Syria and Iraq, Pentagon spokesman Jeff Davis said. Harzi's death followed the killing in an air strike in Iraq of his brother, Ali, an IS recruiter said to be involved in the 2012 Benghazi attack on the US consulate that killed ambassador Christopher Stevens.

The World Food Programme (WFP) has announced it is reducing assistance to thousands of Syrians due to the failure of donors to deliver funds and IS refusal to accept a ceasefire in the northeast to allow farmers to harvest wheat and transport grain to markets.

WFP director Ertharin Cousin said the lack of a ceasefire meant wheat is being stored in the area and could be sold to Turkey. IS’s rejection means Syrians cannot feed themselves at a time WFP faces a $193 million funding shortfall.