SYRIAN Prime Minister Wael Al-Halqi announced a new government offensive, with Russian participation, to drive Islamic State (Isis) and its allies from east Aleppo yesterday.

“We, together with our Russian partners, are preparing an operation to liberate Aleppo and block all illegal armed groups that have not joined the ceasefire agreement or violated it,” he told a visiting delegation of Russian MPs, including the Communist Party’s Sergei Gavrilov.

Mr Halqi added that lifting the Isis siege of the eastern city of Deir Ezzor would be the next goal.

The declaration came more than a week after the second-biggest Saudi and Turkish-funded insurgent group again joined forces with al-Qaida to break the ceasefire in place since February 26.

Ahrar ash-Sham renewed its alliance — dubbed the Army of Conquest — with the Nusra Front to attack army troops, volunteer militias and Lebanese Hezbollah allies in the south-west of Aleppo province on April 2.

Both the army and extremists claimed to control the front-line towns and villages of Khan Touman, Khalidiyah, Zaytan and Birnah yesterday.

The extremists also occupy the eastern districts of Aleppo city, from where they launched a chemical weapon attack on the Kurdish suburb of Sheikh Maqsoud on Thursday.

Ahrar ash-Sham is the second-largest group in the Saudi-convened High Negotiations Committee at the UN-brokered peace talks in Geneva, adjourned since March 25.

Nusra and Isis are excluded from the ceasefire, with all other forces supposedly committed to their destruction.

The Russian Defence Ministry said its monitoring centre at Khmeimim airbase in western Latakia province had recorded 372 breaches of the ceasefire since February 27.

On Friday, defence publisher Jane’s reported that a shipment of 2,000 tons of arms on behalf of the US navy’s Military Sea-lift Command was on its way to Syria’s southern neighbour Jordan after making an initial delivery in Turkey.

Jane’s pointed out that the types of arms listed are not used by the Jordanian military, raising suspicions that they were destined for Syrian insurgents.

On Saturday, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported the execution of four Druze men who were among 300 cement factory workers kidnapped by Isis last week.