The Syrian army has claimed it has taken a strategic district of Aleppo in what would mark the most important advance in the divided city by Government forces and their allies in weeks, but rebels said the battle was not over.
The 1070 Apartments district is located on the southwestern outskirts of Aleppo and lies alongside the government's corridor into the parts of the city that it controls.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based group that reports on the war, said government forces and their allies had seized full control of 1070 Apartments, calling it the most significant gain by the government in Aleppo since September.
A Syrian military source said the army and allied forces were in complete control of the area and surrounding hills.
They have made repeated efforts to oust rebels from the 1070 Apartments area since the summer.
A military media unit run by the Damascus-allied Hezbollah carried a similar report.
Hezbollah, a Lebanese Shia Muslim group, is fighting in support of President Bashar al-Assad in Syria's war, now well in its sixth year.
But officials in two rebel groups fighting in Aleppo - Syria's largest city and commercial hub before the war – said insurgent forces were still trying to fight back.
"The clashes around 1070 Apartments are still going on," Zakaria Malahifji, head of the political office of the Fastaqim rebel group, said, while confirming that the army had taken the district.
Yasser Alyousef from the political office of the Nour al-Dinal-Zinki rebel group said rebels had recovered positions they had lost.
Syrian government forces backed by allied militias and Russian air power launched a major assault on rebel-held eastern Aleppo in September after besieging the area, which the United Nations says is home to 275,000 people.
Rebels counter-attacked on 29 October in a bid to break the siege, targeting government-held western districts of Aleppo in an offensive that included Islamist militants and rebels fighting under the Free Syrian Army banner.
But their progress slowed after early gains.
