Angular app on azure app service - 404 errors when loading config file from assets folder

I am trying to deploy an angular 6 app on azure app service platform (windows machine). The app itself is just a new angular app (basic code generated from ng new appname). I have added some minor code following this tutorial in order to use a config file and leverage variable substitution in vsts release pipelines - manage settings for an angular app with vsts.

These are the code changes I have made to the generated app. In app.module.ts

export function initializeAppSettings(appSettings: AppSettings) {
  return () => appSettings.load();
}

...

providers: [AppSettings, {
    provide: APP_INITIALIZER,
    useFactory: initializeAppSettings,
    deps: [AppSettings],
    multi: true
  }]

For my appsettings.ts file

export interface AppConfiguration {
  apiUrl: string;
}

@Injectable()
export class AppSettings {
  static config: AppConfiguration;

  constructor(private http: HttpClient) {}

  load(): Promise<any> {
    const appSettingsJson = environment.production ? 'assets/appsettings.json' : 'assets/appsettings.local.json';
    return new Promise<any>(((resolve, reject) => {
      this.http.get<AppConfiguration>(appSettingsJson)
        .toPromise()
        .then(result => {
          AppSettings.config = result;
          resolve();
        }).catch(reason => {
          reject(`unable to load settings file ${appSettingsJson} due to ${JSON.stringify(reason)}`);
      });
    }));
  }
}

In my angular.json file I have

"assets": [
              "src/favicon.ico",
              "src/assets",
              "src/web.config"
            ]

And the following web.config file

<configuration>
  <system.webServer>
    <rewrite>
      <rules>
        <rule name="Angular" stopProcessing="true">
          <match url=".*" />
          <conditions logicalGrouping="MatchAll">
            <add input="{REQUEST_FILENAME}" matchType="IsFile" negate="true" />
            <add input="{REQUEST_FILENAME}" matchType="IsDirectory" negate="true" />
          </conditions>
          <action type="Rewrite" url="/" />
        </rule>
      </rules>
    </rewrite>
  </system.webServer>
</configuration>

I have a single setting in my src/assets/appsettings.json file atm

{
  "apiUrl": "https://localhost:5001/api/"
}

This setup works completely fine when running locally using ng serve or even deployed to local IIS using ng build. I use the loaded settings in my app.component.ts and app.component.html to verify that it loads correctly. But when I deploy the app to azure I get a 404 error.

ERROR unable to load settings file assets/appsettings.local.json due to {"headers":{"normalizedNames":{},"lazyUpdate":null},"status":404,"statusText":"Not Found","url":"https://mydomain/assets/appsettings.local.json","ok":false,"name":"HttpErrorResponse","message":"Http failure response for https://mydomain/assets/appsettings.local.json: 404 Not Found","error":"The resource you are looking for has been removed, had its name changed, or is temporarily unavailable."}

I have tried explicitly adding the individual appsettings.json file to my assets array in angular.json and have also tried with and without a web.config file. If I deploy just a basic angular app to azure (i.e. without the additional code to load the appsettings.json file) it works (even without a web.config file). I am pretty new to angular (and web development in general) and have searched everywhere I could for a solution but nothing has fixed it so far.