السوريون يحتفلون مع كسر المتمردين والجهاديين حصار نظام الأسد على حلب

Syrians celebrate as rebels and jihadists claim to break the Assad regime's siege of Aleppo
Syrians in the war-ravaged city of Aleppo took to the streets for a brief moment of celebration last night as a combined force of rebels and jihadists claimed to have broken the regime siege that had strangled the city for a month. 
After six days of ferocious close-quarters combat that killed more than 500 fighters on both sides, opposition forces said they had punched through the lines of Syrian regime troops who had encircled the eastern part of the city. 
The opposition’s success against regime soldiers supported by Russian airpower is a major blow to Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad’s ambitions to finally crush rebel forces in the country’s second-largest city. 
The breakthrough also raised hopes of opening a supply corridor to east Aleppo for the first time in weeks and allowing much-needed food, medicine and fuel to reach the 300,000 civilians still stranded there. 
"Rebels break Aleppo's siege,” the Syrian National Coalition, an umbrella opposition group, said on Twitter.
The question now is whether opposition fighters will be able to hold onto their gains and residents and activists said they were bracing for fierce retaliation from the regime and Russia - possibly including the use of chemical weapons.   
Much of the manpower for the opposition advance came from JabhatFateh al-Sham, a jihadist group that until recently was known as the al-Nusra Front and was al-Qaeda’s official offshoot in Syria. 
The group announced last month that it was splitting from al-Qaeda in an effort to increase its domestic appeal but many experts said the move was only a symbolic rebranding that had no effect on its ideology.  
Like the Islamic State (Isil), JabhatFateh al-Sham are savvy users of social media and released video footage of their bearded fighters attacking an artillery base that had been one of the regime’s main strongholds in Aleppo. 
The footage showed jihadists stepping over the bodies of dead Syrian soldiers and tearing down  a framed poster of Mr Assad before stamping on it and ripping it to shreds. 
The end of siege would be welcomed by the US and Britain but also underscores the failure of Western diplomacy to convince Russia to use its influence in Syria to end the suffering of civilians in Aleppo. 
Robert Ford, the former US ambassador to Syria, said the fact that armed jihadists had been able to bring an end to the siege while Western diplomacy floundered showed the “futility of US tactics and strategy”.   
“Jihadists are now heroes in eyes of local population after breaking siege of east Aleppo. They have won the battle plus the hearts and minds of people,” said JenanMoussa, a broadcaster with Al Aan Television. 
Rather than reining in the Syrian regime troops, Russia’s air force kept up a punishing rain of airstrikes on opposition-held neighborhoods. A Syrian doctor in Aleppo said that more than 40 air strikes hit the city on Saturday alone. 
One bomb hit the M2 hospital where ragged teams of doctors and nurses used what few medical supplies they had left to treat injured civilians. Three people were injured in the blast and photographs from the scene showed the makeshift ward filling with dust after the bomb strike. 
It was the fourth time the hospital had been hit by airstrikes in the last month. 
Young men and boys ventured onto the streets as news of the end of the siege spread late on Saturday afternoon. They waved Syrian flags and honked car horns while others gathered on top of lorries to celebrate. Celebratory gunfire rang out in opposition-controlled parts of the city.  
"Days ago, I was only thinking about how to get a bite to eat," said Ahmad Adna, a 46-year-old resident of eastern Aleppo.
A cartoon of an injured Syrian boy holding up a burning car tire in the same pose as the Statue of Liberty was shared widely on opposition social media pages. 
The breakthrough came in the Ramousah neighborhood at around 5pm as regime soldiers and their allies from the Lebanese militant group Hizbollah pulled back from the area around a former military academy. 
Rebels and jihadists advanced and fighters from besieged east of the city linked up with their allies in the west for the first time in weeks. 
All eyes now are on how the Assad regime and its allies in Hizbollah, Iran and Russia respond to their setback on the battlefield. 
ZaherSahloul, a Syrian-American doctor who was in Aleppo several weeks ago, said people in the city were expecting an increase in air strikes as the regime and its allies retaliated. 
“You expect that the regime and Russia will take revenge on areas that fell recently,” he said. “We expect more bombing.”
One fear is that the Syrian regime will try to balance out its losses by resorting to chemical weapons. On Monday night, a regime helicopter dropped chlorine gas on the town Saraqib in apparent retaliation for the downing of a Russian helicopter a few hours earlier. 
“Looking at the regime’s track record they are ready to do anything to try to win back power,” said DrSahloul. “They know that the world will not respond.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/08/06/syrians-celebrate-as-rebels-and-jihadists-break-the-assad-regime/