Syrian rebels enter Aleppo for first time in eight years in shock offensive

CNN
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Syrian armed rebels have entered Aleppo just three days after their surprise offensive, marking the first time they have set foot in the country’s second-largest city since government forces retook the city in 2016.

Rebel forces launched a surprise attack this week, sweeping through several villages outside the city and reviving conflicts that had been largely static for years.

In a video geolocated by CNN, a rebel fighter is filming as he drives through the deserted streets on the west side of the city. He is heard praising God as the vehicle approaches the Zine El Abidine mosque in western Aleppo.

The official Syrian military said it was facing a “major attack” and claimed it was “reinforcing all places along the various battle fronts”, but several residents of the city say regime forces have withdrawn from several neighborhoods in the western part of Aleppo.

The offensive, which began on Wednesday, is the first major flare-up in years between the Syrian opposition and the regime of President Bashar al-Assad, who has ruled the war-torn country since 2000.

“Our forces have started to enter the city of Aleppo,” said the newly formed rebel coalition, the military operations command.

The rebel group announced earlier that it had seized control of the Syrian government’s military science research center on the outskirts of Aleppo city after “intense clashes with regime forces and Iranian militias.”

In an attack earlier Friday, an artillery shell hit Aleppo University’s student residences, killing four people, according to Syria’s state news agency, SANA, which blamed opposition factions for the attack. The spokesman for the rebel groups, Hassan Abdulghani, rejected the accusations by the Syrian government media as “baseless lies”.

An employee at Aleppo University, who spoke anonymously for security reasons, confirmed that an artillery shell hit the second floor of a dormitory with students inside at the time. A video circulating on social media, geolocated by CNN, shows young men running out of a dormitory on the Aleppo University campus carrying a wounded person.

On Thursday, at least 15 civilians, including six children and two women, were killed and 36 others were wounded in airstrikes and shelling on rebel-held areas of Aleppo and the Idlib countryside, according to the White Helmets, a volunteer rescue group. Iranian state media said an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Brigadier General Kioumars Pourhashemi was also killed in the city.

In a call with his Syrian counterpart to discuss the escalation, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi accused the US and Israel of “reactivating” the rebels and “underscored Iran’s continued support” for the Syrian government and army.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov called on the Syrian authorities to “quickly restore order in this area and restore constitutional order.” Both Iran and Russia are key allies of Syria.

Syria’s civil war began during the Arab Spring in 2011, when the regime suppressed a pro-democracy uprising against Assad. The country plunged into a full-scale civil war when a rebel force, known as the Free Syrian Army, was formed to fight government troops.

The conflict swelled as other regional players and world powers — from Saudi Arabia, Iran, the United States to Russia — piled in, escalating the civil war into what some observers described as a “proxy war.” ISIS was also able to gain a foothold in the country before suffering significant setbacks.

Since the ceasefire agreement in 2020, the conflict has been largely dormant, with low-level clashes between the rebels and Assad’s regime. More than 300,000 civilians have been killed in more than a decade of war, according to the United Nations, and millions of people have been displaced across the region.

This story has been updated with further developments.