SYRIAN forces moved to head off a new al-Qaida offensive against Aleppo yesterday, capturing ground and bombing militants.

Troops and Lebanese Hezbollah guerillas liberated the Air Defence Battalion base south-west of the city, establishing an important bulwark against the looming assault, and shelled nearby Khan Touman held by the al-Qaida-affiliated Levant Conquest Front (LCF).

They then attacked the Hikmah heights to the north-west, overlooking the hotly contested 1070 housing project.

The LCF warned the 1.5 million residents of west Aleppo to stay away from army positions.

The army had brought some 1,500 reinforcements into Syria’s biggest battleground since Friday, while the terrorists claimed to have gathered up to 5,000 extra gunmen.

Fighting resumed in al-Qaida-occupied east Aleppo on Saturday night after the humanitarian truce expired.

Aleppo Governor Hussein Diab claimed the rebel fighters had stopped aid convoys entering and civilians leaving during the truce, firing on those trying to flee.

Meanwhile north of Aleppo fierce fighting continued between the Kurdish YPG militia and invading Turkish troops and their Free Syrian Army allies.

Combat was centred around the town of Sheikh Issa, where the pro-YPG ANHA news agency said Kurdish fighters had killed numbers of Turkish troops and FSA in an ambush and other actions on Saturday.

Syrian armed forces general command described Ankara’s recent attacks as a “serious escalation” by its “occupation force” in northern Syria for the past two months.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said his army would not stop at its immediate objective of al-Bab but would continue to YPG-held Manbij to the east and even the Islamic State (Isis) stronghold of Raqqa in the centre of the country.

In Lebanon yesterday Hezbollah secretary-general Hassan Nasrallah claimed Turkey’s involvement in both Syria and Iraq was a pretext to revive the Ottoman empire.

“After all the Iraqis fighting for Mosul, in comes Turkey and says: ‘Mosul is Turkish and must go back to Turkey.’ Same thing in Aleppo,” he said after reports that Mr Erdogan had claimed both cities for the “Turkish people” in a speech that morning.

South-west of Damascus the army was close to encircling the LCF and its Western-backed allies Ahrar as-Sham in Khan al-Sheh, a long-occupied stronghold of the insurgency, after capturing farms on the north-west, south and south-west of the town.