8 Iranian soldiers killed in Aleppo clashes: Iran media

By Abdolsalam Salimipoor

ISTANBUL (AA) – Eight Iranian soldiers, including two senior Revolutionary Guard officers, were killed in northwestern Syria, Iran’s local media reported this week.

According to Defapress and other Iranian news websites, eight Iranian military personnel -- including senior officers Qolam Hossein Mousavi and Ali Nazari -- were killed in recent clashes in Syria’s northwestern Aleppo province.

On Saturday, Syrian opposition forces broke a weeks-long siege that had been imposed by the Assad regime on opposition-held parts of Aleppo city.

Fighters from the Jaysh al-Fatah (Army of Conquest), an armed opposition group, seized regime positions in southern Aleppo’s Ramousa area, opening the route to opposition-held districts of the city.

Syria has been locked in a vicious civil war since early 2011, when the Assad regime cracked down on pro-democracy protests -- which had erupted as part of the "Arab Spring" uprisings -- with unexpected ferocity.

Since then, more than a quarter of a million people have been killed and more than 10 million displaced across the war-battered country, according to the UN.

However, the Syrian Center for Policy Research, an NGO until recently based in Damascus, has put the death toll from the conflict at more than 470,000.