This offensive puts an end to years of relative calm in northwest Syria.
A lightning breakthrough. Jihadists and their allies have taken control of half of Aleppo, Syria's second city, after two days of a rapid offensive against government forces, an NGO said on Saturday.
“Half of the city of Aleppo is now under the control of (the jihadist group) Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and allied factions”declared to AFP the director of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (OSDH), Rami Abdel Rahmane.
Jihadists and their allies reach historic Aleppo citadel after Syrian regime forces withdrew «sans combat» during this last phase, indicated the director of the NGO based in the United Kingdom and which has a vast network of sources in Syria.
Jihadist fighters entered Aleppo on Friday after two days of an offensive that ended years of relative calm in northwest Syria.
227 dead
These fighting left at least 277 dead, according to a report given earlier by the OSDH, and are the most violent since 2020 in the region, where the province of Aleppo, largely held by the regime of Bashar al-Assad , adjoins the last major rebel and jihadist stronghold of Idlib.
The rebels also took control of the strategic town of Saraqeb, south of Aleppo, at the intersection of two highways linking Damascus to Aleppo and Latakia, according to the NGO.
Intensive raids
On Friday, two witnesses told AFP they had seen armed men in Aleppo and reported scenes of panic in the large northern city. An AFP correspondent in Aleppo reported clashes between the attackers and Syrian forces and groups supporting them.
According to the OSDH, the jihadist group HTS and allied groups, some close to Turkey, reached the gates of the city on Friday after “two suicide attacks with car bombs”. They then gradually took control of a growing number of neighborhoods, this source indicates.
The Syrian army, which deployed reinforcements in Aleppo, according to a security official, assured that it had pushed back “the great offensive of terrorist groups” and regained several positions.
The Russian army announced that its air force was bombing groups “extremists” in Syria, in support of the regime forces, according to Russian agencies. The Syrian air force also launched intensive raids on the Idlib region, the OSDH said.
Rockets and shells
During the civil war that broke out in 2011, left more than half a million dead and displaced millions, HTS, dominated by the former Syrian branch of Al-Qaeda, took control of swathes of entire Idlib province, and neighboring territories in the regions of Aleppo, Hama and Latakia.
The Syrian regime regained control of a large part of the country in 2015 with the support of its Russian and Iranian allies. Its forces, supported by the Russian air force, recaptured the eastern part of Aleppo from the insurgents in 2016, after devastating bombings.
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 offensive has allowed the jihadists to conquer around 70 localities since Wednesday, including around twenty on Friday, including Saraqeb, according to the OSDH.
“For the first time in almost five years, we hear rockets and artillery shells all the time, and sometimes planes”described Sarmad, a 51-year-old resident contacted by telephone by AFP. “We are afraid that the war scenario will repeat itself and that we will be forced to flee our homes”.
Support from Iran
Without being able to explain the speed of the jihadists' advance, Rami Abdel Rahmane wondered if the troops of the Assad regime “were dependent on Hezbollah, currently occupied in Lebanon”. Hezbollah, a pro-Iranian Lebanese group allied to Damascus, has been greatly weakened by the war with Israel in Lebanon, which was stopped on Wednesday by a ceasefire.
Another staunch ally of Syria, Iran, reiterated its “continued support” to the country, where he engaged militarily to support President Assad during the civil war.
The Kremlin on Friday called on the Syrian authorities to “put things in order as quickly as possible” in Aleppo.
The head of “government” self-proclaimed in Idlib, Mohammad al-Bashir, justified the offensive on Thursday by accusing the regime of having “began bombing civilian areas, which caused the exodus of tens of thousands of civilians”.
According to the UN Office of Humanitarian Affairs (Ocha), the violence has displaced “more than 14,000 people, almost half of whom are children”.
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