Russia has no plans to storm Syrian Aleppo

There are no plans to storm the Syrian city of Aleppo despite thousands of Al-Nusra militants massing around the city, the Russian military general staff, which is providing air support to the Syrian army, said on Monday, MOSCOW Reuters reports. 

Fighting between rebels opposed to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and forces loyal to Damascus has flared around Aleppo in recent weeks, threatening a fragile ceasefire in the run-up to the a new round of peace talks on the conflict.

Sergey Rudskoy, head of the Russian General Staff's main operations command, said around 9,500 Al-Nusra fighters had gathered to the south-west and north of Aleppo and were planning a large-scale offensive to cut the city off from the Syrian capital of Damascus.

"All actions of the Syrian military and Russian air force are directed at disrupting the plans of Jabhat al-Nusra. No storming of the city of Aleppo is planned," he said.