BEIRUT: Syrian troops backed by tanks and helicopters repelled a rebel attack on an army base in the northern city of Aleppo on Saturday after a 20-hour battle, military officials and witnesses said.
The government forces pushed rebels out of the Hanano military base, a fortress-like compound in the east of the city, parts of which rebels claimed to have captured on Friday, they said.
"There are a lot of victims on both sides," one witness told AFP.
A military official in Aleppo, Syria's second city and commercial hub, said soldiers destroyed six armoured vehicles which rebels had been using to transport weapons seized in the barracks.
"The rebels had thrown themselves full whole-heartedly into this offensive because they desperately need weapons," the army source said on condition of anonymity.
The Hanano base serves as a weapons storage depot, conscript recruitment centre and the headquarters of the local branch of the military police and anti-riot police.
According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, 18 soldiers and four rebels were killed in Friday's fighting, while at least one rebel died on Saturday.
A Free Syrian Army (FSA) commander who identified himself as Abu Omar said the goal of the operation was to liberate Hanano, cut strategic supply lines and end shelling that has caused high civilian casualties in Aleppo.
The rebels also assaulted Aleppo's Midan district on Saturday by breaking into a religious complex between the central district and a rebel stronghold, according to a military source and local residents.
"The rebels came from Bustan al-Basha district, which they control, and entered the Saint Vartan convent on the edge of the Midan district," a military source told AFP.
"They then tried to take the Midan district but were met with fierce resistance by the security forces of the air force, who are in charge of the area," the source added.
The source and witnesses said that there were ongoing clashes on the edge of Midan, and the rebels were using the religious complex as a base.
A number of refugees have found a safe haven at Saint Vartan amid the fighting which has engulfed Aleppo since July 20. The United Nations estimates that more than 1.2 million people are internally displaced in Syria.
Elsewhere, rebels attacked a military checkpoint northwest of the besieged city, and five fighters died when their unit tried to take an army position in Liramun industrial district, the Observatory said.
Later, warplanes bombarded the town of Anadan northwest of Aleppo, in an apparent retaliatory strike, the Observatory added.
Two rockets fired by "terrorists" hit a church and a convent in the Christian neighbourhood of Aziziyeh, according to state television.
In the capital, government forces shelled the rebel neighbourhoods of Al-Hajar al-Aswad and Tadamun in southern Damascus at dawn, the Observatory said.
Fierce clashes and intense gunfire broke out between the army and rebels in Tadamun and the nearby Yarmuk Palestinian camp, leaving one camp resident killed in the crossfire. Another man was killed by sniper fire in the Qadam neighbourhood.
On the southern outskirts of the capital, a woman was killed in shelling on the suburb of Sayyida Zeinab, while a rebel was killed by the army in the restive northeast suburb of Douma.
A child was killed in shelling in the central province of Homs, while fighting in the flashpoint city of Homs itself left one rebel fighter dead.
At least 14 people -- five civilians and nine rebels -- were killed nationwide on Saturday, the Observatory reported, following a bloody day in which 136 people died, the majority civilians.
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