Islamist rebels breached neighborhoods in Syria''s second-largest city ofAleppoand clashed with government military forces after detonating two car bombs Friday. The incident, reported by a leading war monitoring group and The Associated Press, has renewed international attention on a country wracked by civil war and extremism formore than a decade.
The Syrian Observatory of Human Rights, the monitoring organization, said fierce clashes were underway between the attacking insurgents and regime troops. The fighting is a significant escalation since rebels launched a surprise offensive Wednesday, seizing towns and villages as they advanced toward Aleppo.
The breach marked the first time opposition forces besieged the city since 2016, when they were driven out of Aleppo''s eastern neighborhoods during a military operation in which Syrian troops were supported by Russia and Iran. Four years ago, a ceasefire brought an end to the most intense violence, but the new push from rebels has upended a period of relative calm.
The rebels appear to have gained momentum by the diminished strength of Iran-backed groups such as Hezbollah throughout the region, illustrating how the conflicts in the Middle East feed off one another.Witnesses who spoke toThe Associated Presssaid Aleppo residents were fleeing from areas on the western edge amid missiles and exchanges of gunfire. The AP said an insurgent commander posted a recorded message on social media urging the city''s residents to cooperate with the rebels. The rebels are led by the militant group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS.
Syrian armed forces were repelling attacks, theSyrian Defense ministry saidFriday, adding government forces involved in combat operations were able to regain control over some areas.
"Our armed forces have inflicted heavy losses on the attacking organizations, resulting in hundreds of deaths and injuries among the terrorists," Syria''s general command of the army and armed forces said in a statement translated by NBC News. "Dozens of vehicles and armored carriers have been destroyed, and we have successfully shot down and destroyed seventeen drones."
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which relies on a network of on-the-ground information sources, said at least 121 people have been killed since the start of HTS'' shock offensive, including at least 20 civilians.
Syrian state media reports cited by the AP said insurgent-fired projectiles struck student accommodations at Aleppo''s university in the city center, killing four people, including two students.
The Syrian civil war started in early 2011 with a wave of protests against the authoritarian rule of President Bashar al-Assad. Assad''s government, bolstered by arms shipments from Iran and Russia, cracked down forcefully on the popular uprisings, setting off a spiral of violence and fueling an aggressive insurgency.
BEIRUT — Insurgents breached Syria''s largest city Friday and clashed with government forces for the first time since 2016, according to a war monitor and fighters, in a surprise attack that sent residents fleeing and added fresh uncertainty to a region reeling from multiple wars.
The advance on Aleppo followed a shock offensive launched by insurgents Wednesday, as thousands of fighters swept through villages and towns in Syria''s northwestern countryside. Residents fled neighborhoods on the city''s edge because of missiles and gunfire, according to witnesses in Aleppo. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the country''s unresolved civil war, said dozens of fighters from both sides were killed.
The attack injected new violence into a region experiencing dual wars in Gaza and Lebanon involving Israel, and other conflicts, including the Syrian civil war that began in 2011.
Aleppo has not been attacked by opposition forces since they were ousted from eastern neighborhoods in 2016 following a grueling military campaign in which Syrian government forces were backed by Russia, Iran and its allied groups.
But this time, there was no sign of a significant pushback from government forces or their allies. Instead, reports emerged of government forces melting away in the face of advances, and insurgents posted messages on social media calling on troops to surrender.
Robert Ford, who was the last U.S. ambassador to Syria, said the attack showed that Syrian government forces are "extremely weak." In some cases, he said, they appear to have "almost been routed."
This week''s advances were among the largest in recent years by opposition factions, led by the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham group, or HTS, and represent the most intense fighting in northwestern Syria since 2020, when government forces seized areas previously controlled by the opposition.
The offensive came as Iran-linked groups, primarily Lebanon''s Hezbollah, which has backed Syrian government forces since 2015, have been preoccupied with their own battles at home.
A ceasefire in Hezbollah''s two-month war with Israel took effect Wednesday, the day the Syrian opposition factions announced their offensive. Israel has also escalated its attacks against Hezbollah and Iran-linked targets in Syria during the last 70 days.
Dareen Khalifa, a senior adviser with the International Crisis Group and an expert on Syrian groups, said the insurgents have signaled for a while that they were ready for an offensive. But no one expected the swift advance of the forces toward Aleppo.
"It''s not only that the Russians are distracted and bogged down in Ukraine, but also the Iranians are distracted and bogged down elsewhere. Hezbollah''s distracted and bogged down elsewhere, and the regime is absolutely cornered," she said. "But the surprise element comes in with how quickly the regime crumbled."
The attack on Aleppo followed weeks of simmering low-level violence, including government attacks on opposition-held areas. Turkey, which has backed Syrian opposition groups, failed in its diplomatic efforts to prevent the government attacks, which were seen as a violation of a 2019 agreement sponsored by Russia, Turkey and Iran to freeze the line of the conflict.
Turkish security officials said Thursday that Syrian opposition groups initially launched a long-planned "limited" offensive toward Aleppo, where attacks targeting civilians originated. However, the offensive expanded as Syrian government forces began retreating from their positions, the officials said.
Besides backing opposition forces, Turkey has also established a military presence in Syria, sending troops into parts of the northwest. Separately and largely in the east of Syria, the United States has supported Syrian Kurdish forces fighting Islamic State militants.
The Kremlin said Friday that it considered the attack an encroachment on Syria''s sovereignty and that it supported the quickest possible establishment of constitutional order in the region.
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