Jihadists at the gates of Aleppo, Syria's second city

Photo: Bakr Alkasem Agence France-Presse Jihadist fighters open fire on regime positions on Friday in the suburbs of Aleppo.

Aya Iskandarani – Agence France-Presse in Beirut

Published at 9:05

• Middle East

The jihadists and their allies arrived Friday at the gates of Aleppo, the second city in Syria to be bombed for the first time in four years, after two days of a lightning offensive against the regime that left more than 255 dead, according to an NGO.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) announced that around fifty localities had been conquered by jihadists since Wednesday.

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.

A security official said that the Syrian army had “sent reinforcements” to Aleppo and assured that the attackers “have not reached the city limits.”

According to the OSDH, the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) group and allied formations, some close to Turkey, reached the gates of the city on Friday morning. The fighters “entered the outskirts of the Al-Hamdaniya and New Aleppo neighborhoods of the city of Aleppo after carrying out two suicide attacks with car bombs,” according to the NGO.

During the civil war that broke out in 2011, regime forces, supported by Russian aircraft, had retaken the eastern part of Aleppo, the large city in northern Syria, from the insurgents in 2016 thanks to devastating bombings.

Residents of Aleppo, reached 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.

The UK-based NGO SOHR, which has a vast network of sources in Syria, reported a total of 24 civilians killed, including 19 on Thursday in Russian airstrikes on rebel areas.

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An AFP correspondent on the rebel side reported intense fighting on Friday around Aleppo.

He said he saw the attackers in a town seven kilometres from Aleppo, advancing with armoured vehicles. The fighters said they were receiving orders from a joint operations room.

Photo: Omar Haj Kadour Agence France-Presse Jihadist fighters enter the village of Talhiyah, northwest of Idlib.

« Panic »

Fighters shelled Aleppo for the first time in four years, targeting the university campus where four civilians were killed, according to the official Sana news agency.

“Artillery shells targeted a university dormitory,” “causing panic,” the SOHR said.

“It is strange to see the regime forces receiving such blows despite Russian air cover […] Were the regime forces dependent on Hezbollah, which is currently occupied in Lebanon?,” asked Rami Abdel Rahman, the director of the SOHR, in reference to the war between Israel and the Lebanese movement, an 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 advisers, 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 of neighboring territories in the regions of Aleppo, Hama and Latakia.

According to the SOHR, the fighting reached the strategic city of Saraqeb on Friday, held by the regime and located south of Aleppo, at the intersection of two highways.

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Exodus

The Russian air force has stepped up its airstrikes, according to this source. The Kremlin on Friday called on Syrian authorities to “put things in order as quickly as possible” in Aleppo.

In a press conference on Thursday, the head of the self-proclaimed “government” in Idlib, Mohammad al-Bashir, justified the offensive by saying that the regime had “started bombing civilian areas, which has caused the exodus of tens of thousands of civilians.”

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said that “more than 14,000 people, nearly half of them children, have been displaced” by the violence.

Northern Syria has enjoyed a precarious calm in recent years, 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. The civil war in Syria has left more than half a million dead and displaced millions.