JIHADISTS launched a major offensive against Syria’s largest city Aleppo yesterday.

Ahrar as-Sham and the al-Qaida-linked Levant Conquest Front (LCF) used suicide bombers in their assaults on residential areas in the western half of the city, where 1.5 million people live.

A Lebanese TV reporter said that attacks took place on “all sides … from the furthest points north to furthest south.”

Seven civilians were killed and 70 more injured by insurgent shelling which set buildings ablaze.

The thousands of anti-government fighters trapped in eastern Aleppo didn’t launch any attacks but Islamic State (Isis) staged a seemingly co-ordinated assault on Kuweires air base, which Syrian troops have hung onto for years.

The LCF said a French recruit drove a bomb-laden tank close to army positions before detonating it remotely, then drove another to the same position and blew himself up.

The foreign-funded and recruited terrorist army claimed control of a sawmill and a checkpoint in the south-east.

But the Syrian army said its troops were holding off most of the attack. “Fighting is still ongoing but the intensity [has] dropped,” it said.

Syrian government jets bombed fighters in Mansoura and Abu Shailam villages in the west of Aleppo province and Khan Touman and Tallet Bazo hill — the site of recent army advances — south-west of the city.

The LCF and Ahrar as-Sham briefly broke through into ruined east Aleppo in August after the army took a northern supply route to the area.

But they were beaten back in a month of hard fighting by government forces and allied militias.

Thousands of fighters then withdrew towards their backers Turkey for the country’s invasion focused on Kurdish militia in northern Aleppo.

Insurgents surrounded in east Aleppo have refused a government amnesty and UN offers of safe passage out, and have fired on remaining civilians trying to reach the safety of government lines.