Syria fighting near Aleppo kills dozens, according to monitoring group - Action News
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Syria fighting near Aleppo kills dozens, according to monitoring group

The Britain-based monitoring group The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says at Friday that least 43 insurgents and 30 pro-Syrian government fighters died in the battle for Khan Touman.

Syrian army source denied Khan Touman had fallen to rebels

A rebel fighter from the Jaish al-Fatah brigades prepares to fire artillery during clashes with Syrian pro-government forces near the village of Om al-Krameel, in Aleppo's southern countryside on Thursday. (Omar Haj Kadour/AFP/Getty Images)

Rebels seized a village from government forces near Aleppo overnight, a monitoring group and rebel sources said on Friday, gaining important ground near the Syrian city where the United States and Russia are trying to de-escalate the war.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 73 people had been killed in the battle for Khan Touman, some 15 kilometres southwest of Aleppo in a location near the Damascus-Aleppo highway. While multiple rebel sources said it had been captured, a Syrian army source denied Khan Touman had fallen.

Aleppo-area opposition media activist Bahaa al-Halaby says the insurgents took control of Khan Touman around 7 a.m.

The attack was launched by an alliance of Islamist insurgents known as Jaish al-Fatah, including the al-Qaeda-linked Nusra Front, which has rejected diplomatic efforts to halt the war and promote peace talks.

A general view from March shows a damaged street with sandbags used as barriers in Aleppo's Saif al-Dawla district. (Hosam Katan/Reuters)

The United States and Russia this week brokered a ceasefire in the city of Aleppo itself, where some 300 people have been killed in the last two weeks in government- and rebel-held areas as a result of air strikes and shelling.

"Throughout the night the battles were very intense," said Abu al-Baraa al-Hamawi, a fighter from the Ajnad al-Sham group, one of the factions taking part in the attack. "Areas south of Khan Touman have been liberated," he told Reuters.

The monitoring group said that at least 43 insurgents and 30 pro-government fighters died in the battle for Khan Touman.

With files from The Associated Press