Welcome to Hell: The howitzer that fires propane gas cylinders and is the latest piece of homemade weaponry used by Syrian rebels

By JENNY STANTON FOR MAILONLINE

Syrian rebels are firing propane gas cylinders from howitzers as deadly battles with government forces continue.

With little access to weapons other than small arms such as machine guns, rebels have taken to making their own ammunition.

The latest of these weapons are gas cylinder howitzers, aptly nicknamed Hell Cannons, which on Wednesday were fired towards forces loyal to president Bashar Al-Assad in Aleppo.

The rebel groups are said to take great pride in the cannon, which they developed themselves and has a range of about a mile.

Fighters using the cannon are also made to watch online videos detailing how it is assembled and given a fact sheet on how to fire it.

Syrian rebels fought deadly battles with government forces north of the divided city of Aleppo on Wednesday as both sides sought to expand their ground.

The clashes began with a government offensive and more than a hundred people on both sides of the fighting were killed.

Activists said rebels regained much of the territory they lost a day earlier. Pro-government television channels, in turn, ran footage showing troops running behind tanks in smoke-filled fields and fighters driving vehicles mounted with heavy machine guns to the backdrop of nonstop gunfire and explosions.

A rebel counter-attack and stormy weather prevented Syrian government forces from pressing their offensive on Thursday, a monitor said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the assault was stalling on its third day and the clashes have killed 170 people, including 90 government troops and allied fighters.

The offensive has so far failed to break a rebel siege of the regime-held Shiite villages of Nubol and Zahraa, but government forces had effectively cut the insurgents’ main supply route from Turkey into the east of Aleppo city.

However, regime forces backed by fighters from the Lebanese Shiite movement Hezbollah, as well as Iran and Afghanistan, were losing ground to the rebels.

Earlier in the day, the rebels recaptured most of Hardtaneen village, a day after losing it in fierce fighting.

On another front, rebel fighters were battling government forces around the regime-held village of Bashkoy, also in the Aleppo countryside. 

On Tuesday the UN envoy to Syria, Staffan de Mistura, said the Damascus government was ready to suspend aerial bombardment of Aleppo for six weeks to allow humanitarian aid into the northern city.

Once Syria’s economic hub, Aleppo has been divided between regime control in the west and rebel control in the east since shortly after fighting began there in mid-2012.

In the surrounding countryside the situation is largely the reverse, with rebels controlling much of the area west of the city and regime forces much of the east.