Troops and tanks swept into a restive town near Damascus yesterday in an assault aimed at crushing opposition to President Bashar al-Assad, whose struggle for survival has dragged Syria into an increasingly bloody war.

A Syrian warplane crashed in flames in eastern Syria in disputed circumstances yesterday as President Bashar al-Assad’s forces pursued their drive to quell rebels in Aleppo and elsewhere.

Regime forces strafed rebel-held districts in Aleppo with helicopter gunships and pounded them with shelling on the third day of a pitched battle for Syria’s commercial capital.

Dozens of government tanks have converged on Syria’s largest city as president Bashar Assad marshalled his forces to stamp out a five-day rebel fight to wrest Aleppo from the regime’s grasp.