Tanks ground north along the Damascus – Aleppo highway, leaving behind a capital whose districts the Syrian military have claimed are once again fully under government control.
On Sunday, government artillery bases fired mortars and rockets into rebel held districts, "softening up" the enmy lines before an expected ground invasion. In rebel-held Saheddin district, jet planes dropped bombs that sent plumes of smoke into the sky.
"The battle for Aleppo has not yet begun, and what is happening now is just the appetiser... The main course will come later," a senior government security figure warned.
"All the reinforcements have arrived and they are surrounding the city... The army is ready to launch its offensive, but is awaiting orders."
Since storming Aleppo more than two weeks ago, Syria's rebel army claims to have taken control of more than half of the historic merchant city. Reinforcements of fighters and weapons arrived at the "freed" districts on Sunday, preparing to dig in for the long fight to keep the hard-won territory.
But the slow arrival of a much-threatened "full scale" counterattack has raised questions about the ability of President Bashar al-Assad to win back his largest bastion city.
"The regime is in a difficult position. It doesn't want to enter a full scale battle in Aleppo's streets because it knows that in this guerilla style of fighting it may well lose," said Abdulwahab Sayedomar from the London based British Solidarity for Syria.
The Syrian army is more designed for a hi-tech, long distance war with Israel than street warfare where man armed with Kalashnikovs can fight in places tanks cannot go.
Destroying Syria's second city would also mean destroying the homes and livelihoods of some of President Bashar al-Assad's most loyal supporters, and indeed some of the very pillars of the regime, said Mr Sayedomar, an Aleppo native - a price he believes some members of the Assad government may not be willing to pay.
"Attacking Aleppo will no doubt create internal controversy. It means destroying the areas where some of the elite financiers of the regime or their families live."
Incinerating Aleppo is also likely to further raise the ire of the international community. With diplomatic options left in tatters following the resignation of peace envoy Kofi Annan, it is increasingly clear that the only solution to the Syrian war is to be thrashed out on the ground.
Iran warned foreign nations not to intervene militarily in Syria, threatening that any such action could engulf Israel.
"The fire that has been ignited in Syria will take the fearful (Israelis) with it," said Ali Larijani, Iran's parliament speaker.
The rebel Free Syrian Army operations base in Turkey has begun receiving large scale shipments of anti-tank missiles, machine guns and ammunition funded largely by Saudi Arabia, gunrunners and FSA officers have told the Daily Telegraph. They expressed fears that Syria is increasingly becoming the stage for a proxy religious war between sunni-majority Saudi Arabia and Iran's Shiite leadership.
"We welcome the new weapons. But this is an escalation and we are a little bit afraid of what the future holds. We are frightened that Iran will send its army to support Bashar al-Assad," said one FSA official.
Opposition activists and Lebanese politicians supporting the Syrian uprising have long claimed that the Iranian aligned Hizbollah is present in Syria and helping the regime.
On Sunday Al-Arabiya television aired footage which it said was of 48 Iranian pilgrims captured on Saturday by rebel fighters who have charged that they are members of the elite Revolutionary Guard.
Iran made a rare appeal Qatar and Turkey, for help in securing the release of its citizens that it says where civilians on pilgrimage to the Sayyida Zeinab shrine in Damascus.
In a blow to the Assad regime, Gen Muhammed Ahmed Faris, a military aviator who became the first Syrian astronaut, fled to Turkey on Sunday after defecting.
