Rebels have stormed into Syria’s second city, Aleppo, after launching a blitzkrieg attack that poses the biggest threat to Bashar al-Assad’s regime in years.
The Syrian army said on Saturday that rebel forces “were able to penetrate large areas of the city of Aleppo, but were unable to secure their strongholds due to continued strong and targeted attacks by our forces.”
It added that it was preparing for a counterattack and that its forces had been engaged in “heavy fighting” in recent days across a 100-kilometer (100-kilometre) area.
Rebels led by the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham said on Saturday that its fighters had taken control of dozens of towns and regime air bases in a multidirectional advance from their stronghold in northwestern Syria’s Idlib province.
Images circulated on rebel-linked social media show rebels posing in front of the citadel in the center of Aleppo, which launched an offensive on Wednesday.
The attack comes as Assad faces increasing internal and external pressure in a country torn apart by civil war that erupted after a 2011 uprising. He was able to crush the initial uprising with military support from Russia, Iran, and Iranian-backed groups, including the Lebanese extremist movement Hezbollah.
Fighting in Syria’s civil war has diminished significantly in recent years, with the remaining rebel groups pushed into northern and northwest Syria near the Turkish border.
But over the past year, Israel has launched attacks against Hezbollah in Lebanon and stepped up airstrikes against Iranian-linked targets in Syria, weakening the group that has played a key role in supporting the Assad regime. The Israeli military said on Saturday that it had attacked “military infrastructure” linked to Hezbollah in Syria near the Lebanese border.
HTS’ ability to fight inside Aleppo is a devastating blow to Assad and highlights the regime’s weakness.
“This is very serious for Assad,” said Syria analyst Malik al-Abdeh. “Israel’s attacks on Iran and Hezbollah have created an opportunity for this to happen. The prolonged war of attrition between Israel and Iran has clearly taken a toll on Iran’s ability to deploy and fight in Syria.”
He added that HTS has been planning the attack for months and is working with Turkish-backed forces known as the Syrian National Army, which is not yet fully deployed.
“The people in the regime areas are very demoralized and hopeless and will welcome any challenge to the Syrian regime,” Abdeh said. “And the Syrian army is no longer prepared to die for the regime.”
The Syrian army said dozens of regime forces were killed in the fighting. It added that the scale of the rebel offensive forced the military to carry out a temporary “redeployment operation” aimed at strengthening defenses and enabling preparations for a counterattack.
The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the HTS had captured more than half of Aleppo in just a few hours “without resistance from regime forces.”
The United Nations and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights say the fighting has displaced large numbers of civilians in Aleppo and the surrounding countryside.
Aleppo was the scene of some of the heaviest fighting of the civil war. After laying siege to the city, aided by relentless Russian bombing, they drove out rebel forces based in Aleppo’s eastern neighborhoods. This tilted the war in Assad’s favor.
Emir Hokayem of the International Institute for Strategic Studies said Assad’s government “still has the manpower, airpower and external support.”
“But the loss of Aleppo is a monumental loss that shakes the confidence of regime loyalists,” Hokaim said.
“President Assad thought he was back in the geopolitical game because other countries wanted to normalize relations with him. succeeded in reminding everyone of the erosion of legitimacy.
HTS, led by Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, is an offshoot of Jabhat al-Nusra, an al-Qaeda affiliate that emerged during Syria’s civil war, but is trying to rebrand itself as a more moderate Sunni Islamic force.
It is listed as a terrorist organization by the US State Department and controls one of the last rebel strongholds in Syria’s northwestern Idlib region. The HTS is the most powerful fighting force of the remaining rebel factions.
Neighboring Turkey, which has supported Syrian rebels since the start of the Arab nation’s civil war, also has troops stationed in northern Syria, controls vast swathes of territory and supports other rebel groups.
The Turkish government has ties to HTS, and although it has less control over the armed groups and Idlib, it has ultimately acted as the region’s protector.
Crisis Group adviser Dareen Khalifa said the Turkish government did not encourage the initial HTS attacks.
But she said the group’s battlefield victories meant Turkey could move allied forces into areas in Aleppo province that are home to Iran and the Kurdish separatist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has been fighting the Turkish state for decades. He added that the opportunity arose to do so. It has a strong presence.
“It is definitely in Turkey’s interests. This region is a big security headache for them,” she said.
“That’s where the PKK has built a safe haven, under a kind of protection from Iran and Russia. It’s very close to Turkish-controlled territory and completely within their reach.”
Additional reporting by Neri Zilber in Tel Aviv
