DAMASCUS, Syria — Syrian army officials say troops have regained control of several villages along a strategic highway near the embattled northern city of Aleppo.
The highway links the central city of Hama with Aleppo's International Airport, the second- largest in Syria.
Rebels have been trying to storm the airport for weeks. They ousted troops from several military bases protecting the facility and cut off a major highway the army used to supply its troops inside the airport complex.
In a statement Saturday, the Syrian Army's General Command said its troops had carried out special operations in towns and villages along the road, restoring stability there and at the airport. The statement was carried Saturday by the Syrian state-run SANA news agency.
On Friday, Syrian troops fought fierce clashes with rebels attacking a police academy near Aleppo, while the bodies of 10 men — most of them shot in the head — were found dumped along the side of a road outside Damascus, activists said.
Rebels backed by captured tanks have been trying to storm the police academy outside Aleppo since launching a new offensive on the facility last week. The school, which activists say has been turned into a military base used to shell rebel-held neighborhoods in the city and the surrounding countryside, has become a key front in the wider fight for Aleppo.
The Syrian state news agency said Friday that government troops defending the school had killed dozens of opposition fighters and destroyed five rebel vehicles.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights activist group also reported heavy fighting Friday around the school, and said there were several rebel casualties without providing an exact figure.
Syria's largest city and former commercial hub, Aleppo emerged as a major battleground in the country's civil war after rebels launched an offensive there in July 2012.
Since then, the rebels and regime troops have fought street by street for control of the city in a grinding contest that has laid waste to much of the city, considered one of Syria's most beautiful.
The Observatory said clashes were still raging around Aleppo's landmark 12th century Umayyad Mosque in the walled Old City, which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
The mosque was heavily damaged in October 2012 just weeks after a fire gutted the old city's famed medieval market.
The 10 bodies were discovered on a roadside between the Damascus suburbs of Adra and Dumair, said Observatory director Rami Abdul-Rahman.
All of the bodies were of men who appeared to be between the ages of 30 and 45, he added. One of the men had been decapitated. Their identities were not immediately known.
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