The Latest: Aid convoy reaches Damascus suburb

The Latest: Aid convoy reaches Damascus suburb


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BEIRUT (AP) — The Latest on the conflict in Syria (all times local):

9 p.m.

Syrian state media says a 24-truck convoy has arrived at the formerly besieged town of Moadamiyeh, in the suburbs of Damascus, to deliver food, winter clothes, lamps, and medical supplies.

The convoy Sunday is the first to reach Moadamiyeh since a deal was made to restore the government's authority over the former bastion of rebel strength and support.

The government recently granted safe passage out to some 2,000 rebels and civilians.

Local resident Mahmoud, who did not give his name out of security concerns, said the materials would be distributed Monday.

He said locals have been able to move freely in and out of Moadamiyeh for the first time in years.

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5:30 p.m.

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah says that Turkish involvement in Syria is a thinly veiled land grab designed to establish Turkish dominance over both the IS-held Iraqi city of Mosul and the divided Syrian city of Aleppo.

Nasrallah, in a Sunday afternoon speech, said, "After all the Iraqis fighting for Mosul, in comes Turkey and says ... 'Mosul is Turkish and must go back to Turkey.'"

Nasrallah added: "Same thing in Aleppo. They say, 'It's ours, not Syria's.' Look, this is being revealed every day."

Turkey has soldiers on the ground in northern Iraq, training militia fighters, and has insisted that its forces must play a role in the battle to retake Mosul from IS.

Turkish tanks and artillery are also deployed inside Syria, battling both IS and a powerful Syrian Kurdish-led militia that Ankara claims is a wing of its own outlawed Kurdish independence movement.

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5 p.m.

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah says that the insurgency against Syrian President Bashar Assad is facade for a a larger geopolitical game designed to make "changes to the map" and weaken the region's Shiite Muslim power structure.

Nasrallah in a speech Sunday afternoon said the Syrian rebellion is "not about the fall of the regime, but about targeting the axis of resistance," a reference to the Iran-Syria-Hezbollah alliance. Assad, whose Alawite sect is on offshoot of Shiite Islam, has long provided a corridor for Iranian weapons shipments to the Lebanese Shiite militant group. Thousands of Hezbollah fighters are on the ground in Syria in defense of the government and senior commanders in Iran's powerful Republican Guard are in advisory positions.

Nasrallah said the insurgency is designed to break that axis by ousting Assad. It is, he said, aimed at achieving demographic change, existential changes."

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2:30 p.m.

A leading northern Syrian rebel coalition warned civilians in Aleppo to stay away from government positions around the contested city early Sunday as rebels and pro-government forces clashed along the city's outskirts.

Fighting broke out along the city's southern neighborhoods and countryside and its central districts after a cease-fire to allow rebels and civilians to evacuate the city's eastern quarters expired Saturday night. No evacuations were seen during the three-day window arranged by the Russian and Syrian military commands.

Government artillery shelled the strategically important village of Khan Touman, which overlooks the highway connecting Aleppo and government-held cities in the center of the country, the activist-run Shahba Press reported Sunday. Rebels led by al-Qaida-linked militants took the town from government forces in a surprising advance last May, dealing a setback to the joint Russian-Syrian campaign to expel rebels from Aleppo.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group reported incremental advances for pro-government forces against al-Qaida-linked Fatah al-Sham Front militants in the city's southern countryside.

Al-Manar TV, run by the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, broadcast footage of tanks and fighters advancing under heavy fire along a ridge reportedly in the Aleppo countryside. Hezbollah is fighting alongside Syrian President Bashar Assad's military.

A spokesman for the Nour el-Din al-Zinki rebel faction in Aleppo said an operation to break the government's siege of the rebel-held eastern districts of Aleppo was "coming."

Yasser al-Yousef clarified rebels would not target civilians in Aleppo's government-held districts, but warned of collateral damage from the anticipated operations.

The fighting ran in parallel with renewed clashes further away from the city between Turkish-backed opposition forces and Syrian Kurdish forces over territory formerly held by the Islamic State group. The activist-run Aleppo Media Center said Turkish forces struck over 50 Kurdish positions on Sunday alone. The U.S. has backed both the Turkish-backed forces and the Syrian Kurdish forces in the area, though it has clarified that it does not support the Syrian Kurdish forces that have come under Turkish attack in the Aleppo countryside.

The Turkish military intervened in the Syrian war in August this year under orders from Ankara to clear the border area of Islamic State fighters and U.S.-backed Syrian Kurdish forces linked to Turkey's own outlawed Kurdish insurgency. The Turkish government considers both to be terrorist groups.

Copyright © The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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