Syrian Islamist rebels appear to have made stunning territorial advances against the forces of Syrian President Bashar Assad on Friday, re-entering the city of Aleppo for the first time in eight years amid the apparent collapse of government defenses in the area.
Unconfirmed videos on social media suggest that rebel fighters from Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and other groups captured parts of western Aleppo, which was Syria’s most populous city prior to the country’s ongoing civil war, which broke out in 2011.
Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) emerged as an al-Qaeda splinter faction, although it now rejects affiliation with the terror group. The United States designated HTS as a foreign terrorist organization in 2018.
The offensive marks the rebels’ most significant advance, following years of stalemate in northwest Syria, with Turkish-backed rebels and HTS holding a narrow strip of territory around the provinces of Idlib and Afrin.
Turkey and Russia signed a ceasefire in 2020 after agreeing to turn Idlib into a “de-escalation zone” in 2018.
Oncu Keceli, the spokesman for Turkey’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, called for a halt to the fighting on Friday. “We have emphasized that these attacks must come to an end,” he wrote. “In fact, the recent clashes have resulted in an undesirable escalation of tensions in the region.”
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov called on Friday for the Syrian regime to retake control of the lost areas.
“As for the situation around Aleppo, it is an attack on Syrian sovereignty and we are in favor of the Syrian authorities bringing order to the area and restoring constitutional order as soon as possible,” he said, per Reuters.
Asked about rumors that Assad had made a surprise flight to Moscow, Peskov said that he had “nothing to say” about the Russian social media reports, according to Reuters.
Russian and Syrian jets reportedly bombed rebel-held parts of Idlib on Friday, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
The Assad regime’s brutal recapture of Aleppo in 2016—with Russian, Iranian and Hezbollah support—marked a major turning point in Syria’s 13-year civil war and suggested that the government would prevail over the rebels in most of the country’s Arab-majority areas.
With Russia engaged in Ukraine and Hezbollah reeling from its losses fighting Israel, the loss of parts of Aleppo could suggest that Iran, its allies and proxies have been significantly weakened.
Richard Grennell, former acting director of national intelligence in the first Trump administration, wrote on Friday that the regional chaos points to a lack of leadership from U.S. President Joe Biden.
“Biden isn’t speaking to Putin. We have no U.S. ambassador in Turkey. Biden’s Iran team is weak and suspect. Lebanon in chaos. A war in Gaza,” Grennell wrote. “Who’s calling the Turkish leaders? Who’s in charge?”
(JNS)