Syrian jihadists and their allies have entered Aleppo, Syria's second-largest city, which has come under fire for the first time in four years here, after a two-day lightning offensive against the government troops, reported France Press.
The fighting, in which more than 255 people have died, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), is the fiercest since 2020. to northwestern Syria, where Aleppo province is located, which is largely in the hands of Bashar al-Assad's government and borders the last major rebel and jihadist stronghold, Idlib province.
Two eyewitnesses told AFP today that they saw gunmen in Aleppo and reported scenes of panic in northern Syria's largest city.
„They entered the western and southwestern neighborhoods,” the center's director, Rami Abdel Rahman, told AFP.
Jihadists then took control of five neighborhoods of the city, he added, while regime forces “put up little resistance”.
According to the UK-based NGO, which has a wide network of sources in Syria, the jihadist group “Hayat Tahrir al-Sham“ (HTS) and its allied groups, some of which are close to Turkey, reached the city's outskirts today “after carrying out two suicide car bomb attacks”.
The Syrian army, which a security official says has deployed reinforcements to Aleppo, says it has repelled a “major advance by terrorist groups” and has recovered several of its positions.
According to the official SANA news agency, jihadist fighters shelled Aleppo for the first time in four years, attacking a university campus where four civilians were killed.
„It is strange that government forces are receiving such strikes despite Russian air cover [...] Were they dependent on “Hezbollah”, which is currently busy in Lebanon?” asked Rami Abdel Rahman, referring to the war between Israel and the Lebanese Movement, an ally of Damascus, which ended this week.
Iran confirmed today its “unwavering support” for Syria facing the jihadist offensive.
Tehran is another staunch ally of Syria, where it has participated in military operations, sending advisers at the request of local authorities to support 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 Idlib province, as well as neighboring territories in the provinces of Aleppo, Hama and Latakia.
According to the center, the fighting has also reached the strategic city of Saraqeb, held by government forces and located south of Aleppo, at the intersection of two highways.
According to the same source, the Russian Air Force has stepped up its airstrikes. The Kremlin called today on the Syrian authorities “to bring order” in Aleppo “as quickly as possible“.
At a press conference yesterday, the head of the self-proclaimed “government” in Idlib, Mohammed Bashir justified the offensive, saying that the regime had “started bombing civilian areas, causing tens of thousands of civilians to flee”.
The United Nations Office for Humanitarian Affairs said that “more than 14,000 people, almost half of them children, have been displaced” as a result of the bombing.
In recent years, northern Syria has enjoyed a fragile calm, made possible by a cease-fire imposed after an offensive by government forces in March 2020.
Observance of the truce was controlled by Moscow and Ankara, which supports some Syrian rebel groups along its border.
In 2015 the Syrian government regained control of much of the country with the support of its Russian and Iranian allies. The civil war in Syria has claimed the lives of more than half a million people and displaced millions.