Rebels breach Syria’s second-largest city in a bid to revive a long-running war

BEIRUT – Islamist rebels breached neighborhoods in Syria’s second-largest city of Aleppo and clashed with government military forces after detonating two car bombs on 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 for more than a decade.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the monitoring group, said fierce clashes were ongoing between the attacking rebels and regime troops. The fighting is a significant escalation since rebels launched a surprise offensive on Wednesday, capturing towns and villages as they advanced on 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 backed by Russia and Iran. Four years ago, a ceasefire brought an end to the most intense violence, but the new push by rebels has reversed a period of relative calm.

The insurgency appears to have gained momentum from the diminished strength of Iran-backed groups such as Hezbollah across the region, illustrating how conflicts in the Middle East feed off each other. Witnesses who spoke to Associated Press said Aleppo residents were fleeing areas on the western edge amid missiles and gunfire. The AP said a rebel 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 rejected attack, the This is stated by the Syrian Ministry of Defense Friday, adding that government forces involved in combat operations were able to regain control of 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 personnel 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 information sources on the ground, said at least 121 people have been killed since the start of HTS’s shock offensive, including at least 20 civilians.

Syrian state media, cited by the AP, said rebel-fired projectiles hit student housing at Aleppo 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 heavily on the popular uprisings, setting off a spiral of violence and fueling an aggressive insurgency.

Matt Bradley reported from Beirut and Daniel Arkin from Atlanta.