Violence in Aleppo Spikes

Some 50 airstrikes rocked the rebel-held areas of Aleppo city on Sunday, killing more than 50 people, including children.

These were some of the heaviest air raids by Russian and Syrian government jets the area has seen in nearly a month.

Government helicopters dropped dozens of barrel bombs – oil drums and cylinders filled with explosives and shrapnel – on the densely packed neighborhood of al-Qatriji, according to the U.K.-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

While the Observatory put the death toll at 32 people, including three children, activists told Al-Jazeera that as many as 53 people had been killed in the air raids.

“This week-long campaign of bombing is very intense and day by day it’s getting worse … it is the worst we have seen in a while,” Bebars Mishal, a volunteer with the Syrian Civil Defense, told Reuters.

At least eight people were killed in rebel shelling of government-held neighborhoods of the city.

According to Syrian state media, attacks on Sunday on government-controlled neighborhoods of Hamadaniyah, Midan and others killed at least 20 people, leaving the death toll over the weekend in government neighborhoods at nearly 44 people.

A large proportion of Sunday’s airstrikes targeted the main Castello highway that leads into the rebel-held areas of the city, part of an ongoing government-led campaign to encircle opposition areas, according the Observatory.

Syrian Army and Kurds Press Simultaneous Offensives Against ISIS

Pro-government forces backed by Russian airstrikes pushed into the province of Raqqa, controlled by the so-called Islamic State (ISIS), on Saturday for the first time in nearly two years, as U.S.-backed Kurdish-led forces continue to push into ISIS-held territory in the country’s north.

The U.S.-backed Kurdish-led forces launched an offensive last week to capture the strategic, ISIS-controlled Manbij pocket in northern Aleppo. The area along the Turkish border has been a key stop in the flow of foreign fighters into and out of Syria.

The simultaneous offensives leave ISIS militants pressured from both sides, although they still control the vast majority of Deir Ezzor province to the east.

The government’s blitzkrieg advance over the weekend into Raqqa has brought them within 25 miles (40km) of Tabqa, a town in the Euphrates valley that is home to the country’s largest dam and the Lake Assad reservoir. The U.S.-backed offensive to the north is also reportedly aimed at reaching and capturing the dam, which lies about 30 miles (50km) away from Raqqa city.

Rami Abdulrahman, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said the concurrent offensives have raised suspicions of coordination between Moscow, Damascus and Washington.

British Special Forces Operating Alongside Rebels

British special operations forces are operating alongside rebel fighters on the front line against ISIS in Syria, according to rebel leaders.

Rebel military commanders told the Times that British special forces are defending a rebel unit under daily attack by ISIS, marking the first piece of evidence of British troops’ direct involvement in Syria, other than training rebel forces in neighboring Jordan.

British forces have frequently crossed the border to assist the New Syrian Army (NSA), a faction comprised mainly of former Syrian army special forces that have been retrained by the U.S. and the U.K., as it defends repeated attacks on the village of al-Tanf in Syria’s southeast.

“They helped us with logistics, like building defenses to make bunkers safe,” First Lieutenant Mahmoud al-Saleh told the Times.

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