In Syria, anti-Assad jihadists at the gates of the city of Aleppo – L’Express

The jihadists and their allies, who launched a dazzling offensive against the regime in north-west Syria which left more than 255 dead, arrived this Friday, November 29 at the gates of Aleppo, the country’s second city, according to a NGOs.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (OSDH) reported around fifty localities conquered by jihadists since Wednesday. These are the most violent clashes since 2020 in northwest Syria, where the province of Aleppo, largely in the hands of Bashar al-Assad’s regime, borders the last major rebel and jihadist stronghold of Idlib. .

According to the OSDH, the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) group and allied groups, some close to Turkey, reached the gates of the city on Friday morning. A security official indicated that the Syrian army had “sent reinforcements” to Aleppo and assured that the attackers “did not reach the limits of the city”. “Our forces continue to repel the major offensive launched by armed terrorist groups (..)”, assured the Syrian army in a press release, adding that they had “been able to regain control of certain positions”.

“We are afraid that the war scenario will repeat itself”

During the civil war which broke out in 2011, regime forces, supported by the Russian air force, in 2016 recaptured the eastern part of Aleppo, the large city in northern Syria, from the hands of the insurgents thanks to devastating bombings. Residents of Aleppo, contacted 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 OSDH, a UK-based NGO which has a vast network of sources in Syria, reported 24 civilians killed in total, including 19 in Russian air strikes on rebel areas.

An AFP correspondent on the rebel side reported intense fighting around Aleppo. He said he saw the attackers in a town seven kilometers from Aleppo, advancing with armored vehicles. The fighters claimed to receive orders from a common operations room.

“Panic”

Fighters bombarded Aleppo for the first time in four years, targeting the university campus where four civilians were killed, according to the official Sana agency. “Artillery shells targeted a university residence”, “causing panic”, indicated the OSDH.

“It is strange to see the regime forces receive such blows despite Russian air cover (…) Were the regime forces dependent on Hezbollah, which is currently occupied in Lebanon?” asked Rami Abdel Rahmane, the director of the OSDH, in reference to the war between Israel and the Lebanese movement, ally of Damascus, which ended this week.

A general of the Revolutionary Guards, Iran’s ideological army, was killed in the fighting on Thursday, an Iranian news agency reported. Iran is another staunch ally of Syria, a country in which Tehran is involved militarily by sending advisors, at the request of local authorities, to support President Assad during the civil war. This Friday, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi “underlined Iran’s continued support for the government, nation and army of Syria in their fight against terrorism”, during a telephone call with his Syrian counterpart, Bassam al-Sabbagh.

Thanks to this war, HTS, dominated by the former Syrian branch of Al-Qaeda, had taken control of entire sections of the province of Idleb, but also neighboring territories in the regions of Aleppo, Hama and Latakia. According to the OSDH, the fighting reached the strategic town of Saraqeb on Friday, held by the regime and located south of Aleppo, at the intersection of two highways.

Start of exodus

The Russian air force has intensified its air strikes, according to this source. The Kremlin on Friday called on the Syrian authorities to “bring order as quickly as possible” to Aleppo. In a press conference, the head of the self-proclaimed “government” in Idlib, Mohammad al-Bashir, justified the offensive on Thursday by saying that the regime had “begun to bomb civilian areas, which caused the exodus of dozens 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.

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 at 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. Syria’s civil war has killed more than half a million people and displaced millions.