The jihadists and their allies, who are leading a major offensive in northwest Syria against the regime, approached the large city of Aleppo this Friday, November 29, which they bombed, according to an NGO and the Syrian state media.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (OSDH) reported that around fifty towns were conquered by the jihadists during their meteoric advance, adding that the fighting left at least 242 dead since Wednesday.
A security official indicated that the Syrian army had “sent reinforcements” to Aleppo but assured that the attackers “did not reach the city limits.”
russian attacks
The Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) group and allied groups, some close to Türkiye, launched this offensive against government forces on Wednesday.
The OSDH, an NGO based in the United Kingdom that has an extensive network of sources in Syria, reported on Friday that 24 civilians were killed, 19 of them in attacks by Russian aircraft, allied to the regime, in rebel areas.
These are the most violent clashes since 2020 in northwestern Syria, where the province of Aleppo, largely in the hands of the Bashar al-Assad regime, borders the last major rebel and jihadist stronghold of Idlib.
HTS fighters and their allies arrived on the outskirts of Aleppo, Syria’s second city, on Friday morning. An AFP correspondent on the rebel side reported heavy fighting around the large city in northern Syria.
“Panic”
“They are almost two kilometers from the city of Aleppo,” Rami Abdel Rahmane, director of the OSDH, told AFP.
They bombed the big city for the first time in four years, targeting the university campus where four civilians died, according to the official Sana agency. “Artillery shells hit a university residence” in Aleppo, “causing panic,” the OSDH said.
“It is strange to see that the regime forces receive such blows despite Russian air cover (…) Were the regime forces dependent on Hezbollah, currently occupied in Lebanon?” asked Rami Abdel Rahmane, referring to the recent war between Israel. and the Lebanese movement, an ally of Damascus.
A general in the Revolutionary Guard, Iran’s ideological army, was killed in fighting on Thursday, an Iranian news agency reported. Iran is another unconditional ally of Syria, a country in which Tehran has committed itself militarily by sending advisors, at the request of local authorities, to support President Assad during the Syrian civil war.
Thanks to this war, which began in 2011, the HTS, dominated by the former Syrian branch of Al Qaeda, took control of entire sections of the province of Idlib, but also of neighboring territories in the regions of Aleppo, Hama and Latakia.
The jihadists and their allies cut off the important highway linking the capital, Damascus, with Aleppo on Thursday, according to the OSDH. They also took control of the road junction between Aleppo and the coastal city of Latakia, according to the same source.
14,000 displaced
According to this source, the Russian air force has intensified its air strikes. In a press conference, the head of Idlib’s self-proclaimed “government,” Mohammad al-Bashir, said Thursday that the offensive was launched because the regime “began shelling civilian areas, leading to the exodus of tens of 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.
Analyst Nick Heras of the New Lines Institute for Strategy and Policy believes that the rebels “tried to anticipate the possibility of a Syrian military campaign in the Aleppo region, which was being prepared by airstrikes by the Russian and Syrian governments.”
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 in its border.
The Syrian regime has regained control of much of the country with the support of its Russian and Iranian allies since the conflict broke out in 2011, leaving more than half a million dead and millions displaced.
Source: BFM TV
