The jihadists and their allies entered Aleppo, Syria’s second city, with a two-day blitzkrieg against the regime that put an end to years of relative calm in north-west Syria, and took away government forces the strategic city of Saraqib, in the north-west of the country. The fighting, which according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (OSDH) has caused more than 255 deaths, is the most violent since 2020 in the region, where the province of Aleppo, largely held by the regime of Bashar al-Assad, it borders the last major rebel and jihadist stronghold of Idlib. Two witnesses said they saw gunmen in Aleppo and reported panicked scenes in the large northern city.
“They entered the western and southwestern neighborhoods,” said OSDH director Rami Abdel Rahman. The jihadists then took control of five neighborhoods, he said, adding that regime forces “did not put up much resistance.” An AFP correspondent who entered the New Aleppo neighborhood with the rebels reported clashes between the attackers and Syrian forces and groups supporting them. According to Osdh, a UK-based NGO with a vast network of sources in Syria, the jihadist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and allied groups, some of which are close to Turkey, have reached the gates of the city after “two suicide car bomb attacks”. The Syrian army, which deployed reinforcements to Aleppo, said a security official said it had repelled “the major offensive of terrorist groups” and had recaptured several positions.
During the civil war that broke out in 2011, regime forces, supported by the Russian air force, retook eastern Aleppo from the insurgents in 2016, after devastating bombings. Russian and Syrian air forces launched intense raids on the Idlib region today, the NGO said. Fighters bombed Aleppo for the first time in four years, hitting the university campus where four civilians were killed, according to the official SANA news agency. Another staunch ally of Syria, Iran, reiterated its “continued support”.
Tehran committed itself militarily to supporting President Assad during the civil war. Thanks to this war, the HTS, dominated by the former Syrian branch of al-Qaeda, took control of entire areas of the Idlib province, as well as of the neighboring territories in the regions of Aleppo, Hama and Latakia. According to the OSDH, the fighting also reached the strategic city of Saraqeb, controlled by the regime, south of Aleppo, at the intersection of two highways. The Kremlin called on Syrian authorities to “bring order as quickly as possible” in Aleppo.
The head of Idlib’s self-proclaimed “government”, Mohammad al-Bachir, justified the offensive on Thursday by accusing the regime of having “started bombing civilian areas, causing the exodus of tens of thousands of people”. According to the United Nations Office for Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), the violence has displaced “more than 14,000 people, nearly half of whom are children.”