Sydney:
Jihadist fighters cut the highway between Damascus and Aleppo on Thursday in an offensive that killed about 200 people, including civilians hit by Russian air force strikes, according to a monitor.
A day earlier, the jihadist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and allied factions launched a surprise attack on government-controlled areas in northern Aleppo province, sparking the fiercest fighting in years, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
The toll from the ongoing fighting “has risen to 182, including 102 fighters from HTS,” 19 from allied factions “and 61 regime forces and allied groups,” the Observatory said.
“Nineteen civilians were killed in Russian airstrikes in the Aleppo countryside on Thursday,” said Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Observatory, adding that a day earlier another civilian was killed in shelling by the Syrian army.
Russia is a close ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and first intervened in Syria's civil war in 2015, swinging the conflict's momentum in favor of the president, whose forces once controlled just a fifth of the country .
HTS and its allied factions, including groups backed by neighboring Turkey, “closed the M5 Damascus-Aleppo international highway… in addition to controlling the intersection between the M4 and M5 highways,” the British-based monitor said.
“The highway has now been decommissioned after being reopened by regime forces years ago,” said the monitor, which has a network of sources within Syria.
The intersection of the M5 and M4 highways connects the regime's capital and coastal stronghold, Latakia, respectively, with the second city of Aleppo.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said “more than 14,000 people – almost half of them children – have been displaced” by the violence.
Syria has been ravaged by civil war for more than a decade, although the intensity of the conflict has diminished in recent years.
Pre-empt attack
Some of the clashes, which are taking place in an area spanning the provinces of Idlib and Aleppo, are taking place less than 10 kilometers southwest of the outskirts of Aleppo city.
“This operation aims to repel the criminal enemy's sources of fire from the front lines,” Mohamed Bashir, head of HTS's so-called “Rescue Government,” said at a press conference.
Analyst Nick Heras of the New Lines Institute for Strategy and Policy said the rebels are “trying to prevent the possibility of a Syrian military campaign in the Aleppo region, for which Russian and Syrian government airstrikes against rebel areas have been preparing.”
With some Turkish-backed factions joining the offensive, he said: “Ankara is sending a message to both Damascus and Moscow to withdraw from their military efforts in northwestern Syria,” he said.
In addition to Russia, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was supported in the civil war by Iran and allied terrorist groups, including Lebanon's powerful Hezbollah.
An Iranian Revolutionary Guard general was killed in Syria on Thursday during fighting between Syrian government forces and jihadists, an Iranian news agency reported.
Iranian ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei said the deadly offensive was “part of a plan by the devilish regime (Israel) and the US” and called for “strong and coordinated action to prevent the spread of terrorism in the region ”.
During the more than two-month war with Hezbollah in Lebanon, Israel has intensified its attacks on Iranian-backed groups in Syria, including Hezbollah.
Rebels “are in a better position to seize and conquer villages than the Russian-backed Syrian government forces, while the Iranians concentrate on Lebanon,” Heras said.
'Heavy losses'
The Syrian jihadists and their allies launched their attack on the day the ceasefire between Lebanon and Israel came into effect.
Analyst Haid Haid said the rebels had “been planning this offensive for some time.”
But “if the rebels had waited too long, the regime could have strengthened their front lines now that Hezbollah forces are no longer engaged in the war in Lebanon.”
HTS, led by the former Syrian branch of al-Qaeda, controls parts of northwestern Idlib and small parts of the neighboring provinces of Aleppo, Hama and Latakia.
An AFP correspondent reported heavy, continuous clashes east of the city of Idlib since Wednesday morning, including airstrikes.
A military statement carried by state news agency SANA said that “armed terrorist organizations grouped under the so-called 'Nusra terrorist front' present in the provinces of Aleppo and Idlib launched a major, broad frontal attack on Wednesday morning.
It said the attack with “medium and heavy weapons targeted secure towns and cities and our military locations in those areas.”
The army “in coordination with friendly forces” confronted the attack “which is still ongoing,” inflicting “heavy losses” on the armed groups, the military statement said, without reporting army losses.
The Syrian conflict erupted after Assad crushed anti-government protests in 2011, turning into a complex conflict that has attracted foreign armies and jihadists.
It has killed more than 500,000 people, displaced millions and hit the country's infrastructure and industry.
The Idlib region has been subject to a ceasefire – repeatedly violated but which has largely held – that was brokered by Turkey and Russia following a Syrian government offensive in March 2020.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by Our staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)