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Hello and welcome to NewsHour from the BBC World Service.
Coming to you live from London, I'm James Kamara Samy and we begin today in Syria and the scramble to respond to a swift and unexpected advance into the second city, Aleppo, by rebel forces.
Warplanes belonging to the Syrian government's main backer, Russia, have been in action today, bombing targets in a city that saw one of the bloodiest and most protracted battles of Syria's civil war.
The end of that four year siege of Aleppo made possible by Russian airstrikes, proved to be a pivotal moment in the Syrian conflict, but not its conclusion.
While a war that's estimated to have claimed at least half a million lives may have lowered in intensity, it has never ended.
A combination of rebels and foreign forces control nearly a third of the country, with American troops still stationed in the northeast of Syria to guard against a resurgence by the Islamic State group.
Today, the Syrian army acknowledged it had sustained injuries when the rebels, led by the Islamist group hts, swept into Aleppo for the first time since they were driven out in 2016.
This rebel fighter, Ali Juma, said returning to his home city was a spectacle moment, thanks to God.
And after eight years of being displaced from it by the actions of the Assad family and its criminal machine, today we return to Aleppo.
We return to our country.
I'm a son of Aleppo.
I was displaced from it eight years ago in 2016.
Thank God.
We've just returned.
It's an indescribable thing to return to your country, your land, the place you were brought up in.
We will try to establish what has led to this advance and what it may portend in a moment.
But first let's get the latest on what is happening inside Aleppo.