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.
“We are afraid that the war scenario will repeat itself”
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.”
OSDH, a UK-based NGO which claims to have a vast network of sources in Syria, reported 24 civilians killed in total, including 19 in Russian air strikes on rebel areas. An AFP correspondent on the rebel side reported intense fighting around Aleppo. He said he saw the attackers in a town seven kilometers from Aleppo, advancing with armored vehicles. The fighters claimed to receive orders from a common operations room.
“Dependent on Hezbollah?”
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. For its part, the OSDH indicated that “artillery shells targeted a university residence”. “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 the director of the OSDH, Rami Abdel Rahmane.
A general of the Revolutionary Guards, Iran’s ideological army, was killed in the fighting on Thursday, an Iranian news agency reported. Thanks to the war, HTS, dominated by the former Syrian branch of Al-Qaeda, had taken control of entire sections of the province of Idleb, but also neighboring territories in the regions of Aleppo, Hama and Latakia.
According to the OSDH, the fighting reached the strategic town of Saraqeb on Friday, held by the regime and located south of Aleppo, at the intersection of two highways.
More than 14,000 displaced
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 “started bombing 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 an uneasy calm made possible by a ceasefire established after a regime offensive in March 2020. The truce was sponsored by Moscow with Turkey, which supports certain Syrian rebel groups at its border.
