Jihadists blocked the main road from Damascus to Aleppo during the attack, and monitors said Russian air strikes killed around 200 people, including civilians.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Wednesday that the jihadist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and its allies launched a surprise attack on government-held areas in northern Aleppo province, sparking the heaviest fighting in years. It was announced that.
The number of casualties from the ongoing fighting is said to be “182 people, including 102 HTS fighters,'' 19 from allied forces, and 61 from regime forces and allied groups. The group said.
“On Thursday, 19 civilians were killed in a Russian airstrike on the Aleppo countryside,” said Rami Abdulrahman, director of the observatory, adding that another civilian was killed a day earlier in Syrian military shelling. added.
Russia is a close ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and first intervened in Syria's civil war in 2015, helping the president channel momentum in a conflict in which Syria's military once controlled only one-fifth of the country. It turned into an advantage.
On Thursday, HTS and its allied forces, including groups backed by neighboring Turkey, “blocked the Damascus-Aleppo international highway M5, in addition to controlling the junction between the M4 and M5 motorways. ” said a UK-based observer.
“The highway is currently closed to traffic after being reopened by regime forces several years ago,” said an observer with a network of intelligence sources in Syria.
The intersection of the M5 and M4 motorways connects the capital and regime coastal stronghold of Latakia with the second city of Aleppo, respectively.
Syria has been mired in civil war for more than a decade, but the intensity of the conflict has decreased in recent years.
Some of the clashes have occurred in areas straddling Idlib and Aleppo provinces, less than 10 kilometers southwest of the city's suburbs.
“This operation is aimed at repelling the sources of fire of the criminal enemy from the front lines,” Mohamed Bashir, who heads the HTS's so-called “relief government”, said at a press conference.
Nick Heras, an analyst at the New Line Institute for Strategic Policy Studies, said the rebels were trying to “preempt a possible Syrian military operation in the Aleppo region, where Russia and the Syrian government have been preparing airstrikes against rebel areas.” “There is,” he said.
Some Turkish-backed factions have also taken part in the attacks, he said, adding: “The Turkish government has sent a message to both Damascus and Moscow to withdraw from military operations in northwestern Syria.”
Assad is supported in the conflict not only by Russia but also by allied extremist groups such as Iran and Lebanon's powerful Hezbollah.
An Iranian Revolutionary Guards general was killed in Syria on Thursday during fighting between Syrian government forces and jihadists, Iranian news agency reported.
During its more than two-month war with Hezbollah in Lebanon, Israel has stepped up attacks on Iranian-backed groups in Syria, including Hezbollah.
“While Iran is focused on Lebanon, the rebels are in a better position to take control of villages than the Russian-backed Syrian government forces,” Heras said.
Syrian jihadists and their allies launched the attack on the day the Lebanese-Israeli truce came into effect. Analyst Hyde Hyde said the rebels had been “planning this attack for quite some time.” However, “if the rebels had waited too long, the regime could have strengthened its front lines because Hezbollah forces would no longer be busy fighting the Lebanon war.”
HTS, led by al-Qaeda's former Syrian branch, controls large swaths of the northwestern Idlib region and parts of the neighboring governorates of Aleppo, Hama, and Latakia.
AFP correspondents reported that violent clashes, including airstrikes, have continued uninterrupted in eastern Idlib city since Wednesday morning.
“Armed terrorist groups belonging to the so-called 'Nusra Terror Front' in Aleppo and Idlib provinces launched a large-scale and widespread attack on Wednesday morning,” a military statement carried by state news agency Sana said.
“The attacks with medium and heavy weapons targeted secure villages and towns, as well as our military facilities located in these areas,” the report said.
The military statement said troops “in cooperation with friendly forces” countered the attack, which was “ongoing” and inflicted heavy losses on the insurgents, without reporting any military losses.
The Syrian conflict erupted after President Bashar al-Assad crushed anti-government protests in 2011, and has evolved into a complex conflict involving foreign forces and jihadists.
It killed more than 500,000 people, displaced millions, and devastated the country's infrastructure and industry.
A Turkish-Russian-brokered ceasefire agreement in the Idlib region was in place after the Syrian government's offensive in March 2020, and although it has been repeatedly violated, it has largely remained in place.
