Fighting over Syria's largest city intensified Friday with some of the fiercest battles in two months as rebel forces launched a new offensive to rout President Bashar Assad's forces from Aleppo, activists said. The city of 3 million, once a bastion of support for Assad, has emerged as a key battleground in Syria's civil war. Its fall would give the opposition a major strategic victory with a stronghold in the north near the Turkish border. A rebel defeat, at the very least, would buy the regime more time. Activists reported some of the fiercest clashes yet between rebels and government forces in Aleppo, where the two sides have been stalemated for weeks. Fighters from the main rebel group known as the Free Syrian Army began a new push to drive regime forces from their strongholds Aleppo, Syria's commercial capital on Thursday, calling it the "Decisive Battle," activists said.
