REBEL groups renewed their assault on Syria’s Aleppo yesterday with artillery fire raining down on residential areas and huge suicide vehicle bombs.

The Army of Conquest — an alliance of the al-Qaida affiliated Levant Conquest Front (LCF) — resumed their attempt to occupy the city of 1.5 million residents after a lull of several days.

Towering clouds of smoke and dust rose over the city’s western districts after three explosive-packed armoured vehicles detonated, one driven by a jihadi recruit from Saudi Arabia.

Syria’s Sana news agency said 12 civilians were killed and 200 injured, including a photographer from Iran’s al-Alam TV channel.

Syrian soldiers and allied Lebanese, Palestinian and Iranian forces gave little ground in the face of the onslaught.

But that may well change after today’s 10-hour humanitarian pause in east Aleppo, where an estimated 2,000 extremists from the LCF, Nour al-Din al-Zinki and Fastaqim are surrounded.

Infighting between the latter two groups continued yesterday despite both agreeing to arbitration.

Fastaqim said Nour al-Din al-Zinki — notorious for beheading a 12-year-old Palestinian refugee boy on video earlier this year — had seized their headquarters and a warehouse.

Lieutenant General Sergei Rudskoi of the Russian general staff said the insurgents, who had rejected the truce out of hand, were shooting at 40-60,000 civilians trying to flee the east, and laying mines in humanitarian corridors.

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, meeting with quisling former prime minister Riad Hijab of the Saudi-controlled High Negotiations Committee in Berlin, said the pause was “far from enough.”

A flotilla of Russian ships, including the aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov, is currently in the Mediterranean on its way to Syria suggesting the country may have plans to step up its action in Aleppo.