Syrian rebels entered Aleppo after a lightning attack

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Rebels have stormed Syria’s second city Aleppo after launching a lightning offensive that poses the biggest threat to Bashar al-Assad’s regime in the long-running civil conflict. year.

Images circulated Friday night on opposition-linked social media showed rebel forces posing in front of Aleppo citadel, located in the city center.

The militants, led by the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, said on Friday night that they were “expanding control inside the city of Aleppo” after launching an offensive on Wednesday.

The attack comes as Assad faces growing pressure at home and abroad in a country ravaged by years of civil war that erupted after a popular uprising in 2011.

He was able to quell the initial uprising with military support from Russia, Iran and Iranian-backed militant groups, including Hizbollah, the Lebanese militant movement.

But over the past year, Israel has stepped up airstrikes on Iran-linked targets in Syria as it launched an offensive against Hizbollah in Lebanon, weakening groups that play a key role in supporting Assad regime.

HTS’s ability to fight inside Aleppo, which endured some of the worst fighting of the civil war, is a devastating blow to Assad and underscores the regime’s weakness.

Government forces took control of Aleppo in 2016 after besieging the city and, backed by Russian airstrikes aimed at dislodging rebels based in the eastern part of the city, turned the tide. war in Assad’s favor.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a British-based monitoring group, said HTS had taken control of more than half of Aleppo city in just a few hours “without any resistance from regime forces”. “.

But Syrian state news said the army had detained “a number of terrorists who took photos in some neighborhoods in Aleppo to show that terrorist groups have occupied and controlled these areas” .

They added that their troops were continuing to “repel attacks by terrorist organizations in the countryside of Aleppo and Idlib.”

State media reported that Russian forces killed more than 200 “terrorists” as part of a joint operation with the Syrian army on Friday.

The United Nations said Aleppo international airport was closed and all flights suspended. The United Nations and Syria’s Human Rights Watch said the fighting had displaced large numbers of civilians in Aleppo and surrounding rural areas.

According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, dozens of people were killed on Friday, mainly government forces and rebels but also civilians.

HTS, the group that controlled one of the last strongholds of the armed opposition in the Idlib region of northwestern Syria, is listed as a terrorist organization by the US State Department.

Neighboring Turkey has supported Syrian rebels and exercised control over a region of northern Syria. Although Ankara is known to have ties to HTS, it has less control over the rebels than other rebel groups.