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The insurgents were defeated SyriaCroatia’s largest city on Friday and clashed with government forces for the first time since 2016, according to war observers and fighters, in a surprise attack that sent residents fleeing and added new uncertainty to a region rocked by multiple wars.
The advance on Aleppo follows a shock offensive launched by rebels on Wednesday, as thousands of fighters swept through villages and towns in northwestern Syria.
Residents have fled neighborhoods on the city’s edge because of missiles and gunfire, according to witnesses in Aleppo.
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The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the country’s unresolved civil war, said dozens of fighters on both sides had been killed.
The attack injected new violence into the region, which was experiencing two wars Gauze and Lebanon involving Israel and other conflicts, including the Syrian civil war that began in 2011.
Opposition forces have not attacked Aleppo since they were driven from the eastern neighborhoods in 2016 after a grueling military campaign in which Syrian government forces were backed by Russia, Iran and their allied groups.
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But this time there was no sign of a significant return by government forces or their allies.
Instead, there were reports of government forces melting away before the advance, with rebels posting messages on social media calling for troops to surrender.
Robert Ford, who was the last US ambassador to Syria, said the attack showed that Syrian government forces were “extremely weak”.
In some cases, he said, they appear to be “almost driven out.”
This week’s advance was among the biggest in years by opposition factions, led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS, and represents the most intense fighting in northwest Syria since 2020, when government forces seized areas previously controlled by the opposition.
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The offensive came as Iran-linked groups, primarily Lebanon’s Hezbollah, which has backed Syrian government forces since 2015, were preoccupied with their own struggles at home.
A ceasefire in Hezbollah’s two-month war with Israel took effect on Wednesday, the day Syrian opposition factions announced their offensive.
Israel has also escalated its attacks on Hezbollah and Iran-linked targets in Syria over the past 70 days.
Dareen Khalifa, a senior adviser to the International Crisis Group and an expert on Syrian groups, said the rebels had signaled for some time that they were ready to launch an offensive. But no one expected the rapid advance of the forces towards Aleppo.
“Not only are the Russians distracted and stuck in Ukraine, but the Iranians are also distracted and stuck elsewhere.
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Hezbollah is distracted and stuck elsewhere, and the regime is absolutely cornered,” she said.
“But the element of surprise comes with how quickly the regime collapsed.”
The attack on Aleppo followed weeks of simmering low-level violence, including government attacks on opposition-held areas.
Turkey, which has backed Syrian opposition groups, has failed in its diplomatic efforts to prevent the government attacks, which were seen as a violation of a 2019 agreement sponsored by Russia, Turkey and Iran to freeze the conflict line.
Turkish security officials said Thursday that Syrian opposition groups had initially launched a long-planned “limited” offensive toward Aleppo, where attacks targeting civilians originated.
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However, the offensive expanded as Syrian government forces began to withdraw from their positions, officials said.
The aim of the offensive was to re-establish the borders of the de-escalation zone, according to Turkish officials.
The 2016 battle for Aleppo was a turning point in the war between Syrian government forces and rebel fighters after protests against Bashar Assad’s rule in 2011 turned into all-out war.
Russia and Iran and their allied groups helped Syrian government forces regain control of the city that year after a grueling military campaign and weeks-long siege.
In addition to supporting opposition forces, Turkey has also established a military presence in Syria, sending troops to parts of the northwest.
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Separately and mostly in eastern Syria, the United States is supporting Syrian Kurdish forces in the fight against Islamic State militants.
The Syrian government has not commented on the rebels who broke through the borders of the city of Aleppo.
The Kremlin said on Friday that it considers the attack an encroachment on Syria’s sovereignty and that it supports the establishment of a constitutional order in the region as soon as possible.
“Of course, this is a violation of Syrian sovereignty in this region,” Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said at a press conference.
The Syrian armed forces said in a statement on Friday that they had clashed with rebels in villages around Aleppo and Idlib, destroying drones and heavy weapons.
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They vowed to repel the attack and accused the rebels of spreading false information about their advance.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said rebels detonated two car bombs on Friday on the western edge of Aleppo.
A war monitor said the rebels also managed to take control of Saraqeb, south of Aleppo, a city at a strategic crossroads of highways linking Aleppo with Damascus and the coast.
Syrian government authorities diverted traffic from that highway on Thursday.
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Turkey’s state-run Anadolu Agency reported that rebels entered the city center on Friday and now control about 70 locations in Aleppo and Idlib provinces.
Syrian state media reported that rebel missiles fell on student accommodation at Aleppo University in the center of the city, killing four people, including two students.
Syria’s armed forces said rebels were violating a 2019 agreement that de-escalated fighting in the area, the last remaining opposition stronghold for years.
Hezbollah was the “main force” in the government’s control of Aleppo, said Rami Abdurrahman, head of the Observatory.
In a telephone conversation with his Syrian counterpart, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi described the rebel attacks in Syria “as a conspiracy orchestrated by the US and the Zionist regime after the defeat of the regime in Lebanon and Palestine.”
Rebels have released videos online showing them using drones, a new weapon for them.
It was not clear to what extent drones were used on the battlefield.
Early on Friday, rebels attacked a military airbase southeast of Aleppo with drones, destroying a helicopter, reports Anadolu Agency.
Opposition groups also seized heavy weapons and military vehicles from government forces, the agency said.
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