Jihadist fighters cut off the Damascus-to-Aleppo highway during an offensive on Thursday that a monitor says killed about 200 people, including civilians hit by Russian air force strikes.
A day earlier, jihadist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and allied factions launched a surprise attack on government-held areas of northern Aleppo province, triggering the worst fighting in years, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. .
The death toll in the ongoing fighting has risen to 182, including 102 fighters from HTS, 19 from allied groups and 61 from regime forces and affiliated groups, the Observatory said.
“Russian airstrikes in the Aleppo countryside killed 19 civilians on Thursday,” Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman said. A day earlier, another civilian had been killed in Syrian army shelling, he said.
Russia is a close ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and first intervened in Syria’s civil war in 2015, swinging the conflict in favor of the president, whose forces once controlled only a fifth of the country. .
The Britain-based monitor said HTS and its allies, including groups backed by neighboring Turkey, “cut off the Damascus-Aleppo international M5 highway, in addition to controlling the junction between the M4 and M5 highways…” .
“The highway is now out of service after it was reopened by regime forces years ago,” said the monitor, which has a network of sources inside Syria.
The junction of the M5 and M4 highways links Latakia, the capital and the regime’s coastal stronghold, with the second city, Aleppo, respectively.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said “more than 14,000 people – almost half of whom are children – have been displaced” by the violence.
Syria has been in the grip of civil war for more than a decade, although the intensity of the conflict has decreased in recent years.
‘Pre-empt’ attack
Some of the clashes, which are taking place in an area spanning Idlib and Aleppo provinces, are 10 kilometers (six miles) southwest of the outskirts of Aleppo city.
“The purpose of this operation is to push the sources of criminal enemy fire back from the front lines,” Mohammad Bashir, head of HTS’s so-called “Salvation Government,” said during a press conference.
Nick Heras, an analyst at the New Lines Institute for Strategy and Policy, said the rebels were “trying to eliminate the possibility of a Syrian military campaign in the area of Aleppo, with the Russian and Syrian governments preparing airstrikes against rebel areas.” Was”.
“With some Turkish-backed factions joining the offensive, Ankara is sending a message to both Damascus and Moscow to step back from their military efforts in northwestern Syria,” he said.
As well as Russia, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is supported in the civil war by Iran and allied militant groups, including Lebanon’s powerful Hezbollah.
A general from Iran’s Revolutionary Guards was killed during fighting between Syrian government forces and jihadists in Syria on Thursday, an Iranian news agency reported.
Iranian ministry spokesman Esmail Baghai said the deadly attack was “part of the plan of the satanic regime (Israel) and the US” and called for “firm and coordinated action to stop the spread of terrorism in the region.”
During the more than two-month war with Hezbollah in Lebanon, Israel stepped up its attacks on Iran-backed groups in Syria, including Hezbollah.
“Rebel forces are in a better position to capture villages than Russia-backed Syrian government forces, while the Iranians are focused on Lebanon,” Heras said.
‘huge loss’
On the same day the Lebanon-Israel ceasefire came into force, Syrian jihadists and their allies launched their attack.
Analyst Haid Haid said the rebels had been “planning this attack for a long time”.
But “if the rebel forces had waited too long the regime would have been able to reinforce its front lines because Hezbollah forces are no longer engaged in the war in Lebanon”.
HTS, led by al-Qaeda’s former Syria branch, controls the northwest Idlib region as well as small parts of neighboring Aleppo, Hama and Latakia provinces.
An AFP correspondent reported heavy, unabated clashes, including airstrikes, east of Idlib city since Wednesday morning.
A military statement carried by state news agency SANA said that “armed terrorist organizations under the so-called ‘Nusra terrorist front’ present in Aleppo and Idlib provinces launched a major, widespread attack on Wednesday morning”.
It added that “the attacks with medium and heavy weapons targeted protected villages and towns and our military sites in those areas”.
Without reporting military losses, the military statement said the army “in cooperation with friendly forces” repulsed the attack “which is still ongoing”, causing “heavy losses” to the armed groups.
The conflict in Syria erupted in 2011 after Assad crushed anti-government protests, turning into a complex conflict involving foreign forces and jihadists.
It has killed more than 500,000 people, displaced millions and damaged the country’s infrastructure and industry.
The Idlib region is subject to a ceasefire brokered by Turkey and Russia following a Syrian government offensive in March 2020 – which has been repeatedly violated, but which remains largely intact.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
