Jihadists and their allies entered Aleppo, Syria's second city, on Friday, bombed for the first time in four years, after two days of a dazzling offensive against the regime.
These fighting, which left more than 255 dead according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, are the most violent since 2020 in northwest Syria, where the province of Aleppo, largely in the hands of the regime of Bashar al-Assad, borders the last major rebel and jihadist bastion of Idlib.
On Friday, two witnesses told AFP they had seen armed men in Aleppo and reported scenes of panic in the large city in northern Syria.
“They entered the west and south-west neighborhoods,” OSDH director Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP.
The jihadists then took control of five neighborhoods of the city, he added, while the regime forces “did not put up much resistance”.
According to this NGO, based in the United Kingdom and which has a vast network of sources in Syria, the jihadist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and allied groups, some close to Turkey, reached the gates of Syria on Friday. the city “after carrying out two suicide attacks with car bombs”.
The Syrian army, which deployed reinforcements in Aleppo, according to a security official, assured that it had repelled “the major offensive of terrorist groups” and regained several positions.
During the civil war which broke out in 2011, regime forces, supported by the Russian air force, recaptured the eastern part of Aleppo from the insurgents in 2016, thanks to devastating bombings.
Residents of Aleppo, contacted by telephone by AFP, expressed their concern.
“For the first time in almost five years, we hear rockets and artillery shells all the time, and sometimes planes,” said Sarmad, a 51-year-old man.
“We are afraid that the war scenario will repeat itself, and that we will be forced to flee our homes,” he added.
An AFP correspondent on the rebel side reported intense fighting around Aleppo on Friday. The fighters claimed to receive orders from a common operations room.
This offensive has allowed the jihadists to conquer around fifty localities since Wednesday, according to the OSDH. On Friday, Russian and Syrian air forces launched intensive raids on the Idlib region, the NGO said.
– Support from Iran –
Fighters bombarded Aleppo for the first time in four years, targeting the university campus where four civilians were killed, according to the official Sana agency.
“It is strange to see the regime forces receive such blows despite Russian air cover (…) Were the regime forces dependent on Hezbollah, which is currently occupied in Lebanon?” asked Rami Abdel Rahmane, in reference to the war between Israel and the Lebanese movement, ally of Damascus, which ended this week.
Iran reiterated on Friday its “continued support” for Syria in the face of this offensive.
Iran is another staunch ally of Syria, where Tehran has engaged militarily by sending advisors, at the request of local authorities, to support President Assad during the civil war.
Thanks to this war, HTS, dominated by the former Syrian branch of Al-Qaeda, had taken control of entire sections of the province of Idlib, but also neighboring territories in the regions of Aleppo, Hama and Latakia.
According to the OSDH, the fighting also reached on Friday the strategic town of Saraqeb, held by the regime and located south of Aleppo, at the intersection of two highways.
– Exodus –
The Russian air force has intensified its air strikes, according to this source. The Kremlin on Friday called on the Syrian authorities to “bring order as quickly as possible” to Aleppo.
In a press conference, the head of the self-proclaimed “government” in Idlib, Mohammad al-Bashir, justified the offensive on Thursday by saying that the regime had “begun to bomb civilian areas, which caused the exodus of dozens thousands of civilians.
The UN Office of Humanitarian Affairs (Ocha) indicated that “more than 14,000 people, almost half of whom are children, have been displaced” by the violence.
Northern Syria has benefited in recent years from a precarious calm made possible by a ceasefire established after a regime offensive in March 2020.
The truce was sponsored by Moscow with Turkey, which supports some Syrian rebel groups on its border.
The Syrian regime regained control of a large part of the country in 2015 with the support of its Russian and Iranian allies. Syria's civil war has killed more than half a million people and displaced millions.
