In a surprise offensive, the rebels broke in to the largest city in the country

Syria’s largest rebel attack in a generation of conflict: An Israeli attack on the rebels in the wake of the Syrian conflict with Israel

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.

Early Saturday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said rebels had entered western Aleppo, and videos and photos shared online showed armed men celebrating in the city’s main squares and posing in front of the city’s ancient citadel.

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.

But this time, there was no sign of a significant pushback from government forces or their allies. The government forces melted away in the face of advances, and the Taliban posted calls on social media for troops to surrender.

Ford states, “This shows that the Assad military forces were very brittle, and could cause many casualties, especially on civilian targets.” “The regime is obviously very weak, and its external supporters are much weaker than they were a couple of years ago, and, frankly, much weaker than almost anybody expected.”

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.

The cessation of hostilities in Hezbollah’s war with Israel took effect on Wednesday when the Syrian opposition announced their offensive. Israel has been attacking Iran-linked targets in Syria for 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 anticipated that they would move quickly toward the city.

The Iranians are bogged down in other places and the Russians are distracted in Ukraine. Hezbollah’s distracted and bogged down elsewhere, and the regime is absolutely cornered,” she said. The regime crumbled so quickly that the surprise element came in.

Russia and Iran and its allied groups helped Syrian government forces reclaim control of the city that year after a grueling military campaign and a siege that lasted for weeks.

Turkey has established a military presence in Syria, as well as backing opposition forces. The United States supports Kurdish forces fighting the Islamic State in east of Syria.

The attack on Syria was considered by the Kremlin to be an encroachment on the nation’s sovereignty and it supported the creation of a constitutional order in the region.

The country’s armed forces said in a statement that they destroyed drones and heavy weaponry in their battle with the Taliban in the countryside. They vowed to repel the attack and accused the insurgents of spreading false information about their advances.

The two car bombs exploded on the western side of the city, according to the Observatory. The war monitor said the rebels were able to take control of Saraqeb, a town south of the city that sits at the intersection of the two highways. Syrian government authorities diverted traffic from that highway Thursday.

Turkey’s state-run Anadolu Agency reported that the insurgents entered the city center Friday and now control about 70 locations in Aleppo and Idlib provinces.

The state media in Syria reported that four people, including two students, died when projectiles from the rebels landed in student accommodations at the university.

Syrian armed forces said the insurgents are violating a 2019 agreement that de-escalated fighting in the area, the last remaining opposition stronghold for years.

Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi described the attacks in Syria as a plot by the U.S. and the Zionist regime, after their loss in Lebanon and Palestine.

Insurgents are showing off drones, a new weapon. It was not clear to what extent the drones were used on the battleground.

Towards a resolution of the Syrian civil war: The U.S. and Turkey’s influence in the region of Idlib

Following years of military stalemate, in which a low-intensity conflict had persisted primarily in the country’s northwestern region of Idlib, these developments appear to have upended long-held calculations about Syria’s 13-year civil war, which began during the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings.

For years, Assad’s forces had leaned on support from Russia and Iran-backed militias to grind down various rebel factions that had sprung up to oppose his rule. Until this past week, Assad maintained control over much of the country, albeit tenuously in some areas.

He said that they are further away from a solution than two days ago. The world needs to find a final settlement in Syria and put its arms around it.

“The world has taken its eye off the ball,” says Myles Caggins, a senior fellow at the New Lines Institute think tank and a former spokesperson for the anti-ISIS military coalition that U.S. led in northeast Syria. Russia, Turkey and Iran have mostly set up a stalemate of instability in Syria with areas that are competing interests, from east to west, north to south.

Despite the presence of American troops in the country’s northeast, the U.S. hasn’t commented on the current situation in the region.

President Assad’s whereabouts were unknown late Saturday, ahead of what the news channel Al Arabiya reported was a scheduled visit from Iran’s foreign minister Sunday.

“The combination of sheer dependence on a weakened Iran and rampant corruption within Syrian army ranks have meant the Syrian army has very little capacity to hold ground,” says Lina Khatib, an associate fellow at the Middle East and North African program at British think tank Chatham House. The regime had taken for granted the fact that it had just won the war.

“While they remain, of course, concerned about the fallout, I think they’re way less concerned than they were a few years back,” she says of the Turkish government. “That has been a big culprit in this offensive, I think.”

According to a senior advisor at the International Crisis Group, Turkey had been prohibiting HTS from launching an attack on government territory for some time. She believes that the Turks may have changed their mind due to the regional changes.