Intense fighting approached Syria’s northern Aleppo city after armed opposition groups launched a shock offensive on regime-held areas this week, triggering the fiercest fighting the country has seen since 2020.
On Wednesday, a coalition of anti-regime forces led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) launched wide-scale attacks toward Aleppo, retained by Bashar Assad’s regime, reaching as close as 1 kilometer (0.62 miles) within the city’s outer neighborhoods.
Armed groups seized at least 50 villages and towns in Aleppo and Idlib, as well as heavy weapons, depots and military vehicles belonging to the Assad regime, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor said Friday.
The land incursion is the first such territorial advance since March 2020 when Russia, which backs Assad, and Türkiye, which supports the Syrian opposition forces, which do not include Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, agreed to a cease-fire that led to military action halting in Syria's last major opposition stronghold in the country's northwest.
On Thursday, Russian and Syrian warplanes bombed opposition-held northwest Syria near the border with Türkiye to try to push back the offensive.
The fighting has killed at least 242 people, according to a Syrian war monitor, most of them combatants on both sides but also including civilians, including 24 dead, most of them in Russian airstrikes.
The fighters had on Thursday cut a key highway linking Aleppo to Syria's capital Damascus, according to the Britain-based Observatory.
The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said "more than 14,000 people – nearly half are children – have been displaced" by the violence.
At a news conference earlier this week, Mohamed Bashir of the HTS said: "This operation aims to repel the sources of fire of the criminal enemy from the frontlines."
The HTS controls swathes of the northwest Idlib region as well as small parts of neighboring Aleppo, Hama and Latakia provinces.
The Idlib region is subject to a cease-fire, repeatedly violated but which had largely been holding, brokered by Türkiye and Russia after a Syrian regime offensive in March 2020.
Struggle for Idlib
Turkish security sources on Thursday said tensions have already been brewing between regime forces and militant groups, referring to the HTS.
Türkiye's direct intervention prevented regime forces and militants from taking over Idlib in its entirety in the period between 2019 and 2020, sources said, pointing out "repeated" attacks that followed from Russia and the Assad regime toward Idlib to prevent military buildup in the area.
Sources said Türkiye prevented operations by opposition groups until today so as not to escalate tensions further in the region amid Israel's aggression.
"Türkiye also pursued international efforts and conveyed its expectations to prevent attacks by the Assad regime to guarantor countries in Astana and other platforms. Yet, international platforms did not take any steps to that extent," the sources said.
They cited that more than 30 civilians were killed in attacks targeting Idlib, including three children attending a Quran school.
The offensive comes at a sensitive time for Syria and the region, with a fragile cease-fire between Hezbollah and Israel taking effect earlier this week in neighboring Lebanon.
Syria's civil war began when Assad cracked down in 2011 on pro-democracy protests. Since then, it has killed more than 500,000 people, displaced millions and battered the country's infrastructure and industry.