Rebel brigades fought Hizbollah-backed forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad in and around Syria’s commercial hub of Aleppo yesterday, trying to claw back territory lost to an assault that threatens the opposition’s grip on the city, activists said.

The bloodshed in Qusair would be repeated in Aleppo

Rebel brigades poured into Aleppo last July and have more than half the city under their control. But pro-Assad forces have deployed there in the past three weeks, suggesting a push to retake the city could be under way.

So far, Assad’s forces have not made a major sweep into rebel areas, but given the size of the city and its position near Turkey allowing supplies to the opposition, it would be a major victory for the government if it were to regain Aleppo.

The battles in the city follow the capture by loyalist troops and their Lebanese Shi’ite Hizbollah guerrilla allies of Qusair, a strategic town in central Syria, after heavy bombardment that razed much of the town.

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said last week she feared that the bloodshed in Qusair would be repeated in Aleppo and undermine international efforts to push for an end to the more than two year civil war.

The seizure of Qusair restored a crucial land link between Hizbollah strongholds in Lebanon and Assad’s military, which is dominated by his minority Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shi’ite Islam that has controlled Syria since the 1960s.

The involvement of Hizbollah fighters on the side of Assad, a fellow ally of the main Shi’ite power Iran, has galvanised Arab governments, including Egypt, behind the rebels, who mostly follow the Sunni version of Islam that dominates the Arab world.

Activists in the region said opposition forces, who include growing numbers of radicalised Islamists, have been mounting counter attacks on Hizbollah-backed troops and Shi’ite militiamen recruited from Shi’ite enclaves near the mostly Sunni metropolis, some 35 kilometres from the border with Turkey.

Hizbollah, fighting openly in Syria to help Assad survive the uprising, does not comment on its operations in the country.

A Lebanese security source said unlike Qusair, which is close to Hizbollah strongholds in Lebanon’s Bekaa valley, the group might not send its guerrillas to unfamiliar terrain in Aleppo.