Syrian troops in Aleppo backed by warplanes are fighting a shock offensive by rebels

BEIRUT (AP) – Syrian government troops battled rebels inside the country’s largest city, Aleppo for the first time since 2016, as warplanes targeted rebel supply lines on the city’s outskirts, state media reported Saturday.

Rebels broke through government defense lines in Aleppo on Friday and entered the city’s western quarter with little resistance. Rebels launched their shock offensive in Aleppo and Idlib’s countryside on Wednesday, wresting control of dozens of villages and towns along the way, including a strategic town south of Aleppo.

The pro-government newspaper Al-Watan reported airstrikes on the outskirts of Aleppo city, targeting rebel supply lines. It posted a video of a missile landing on a gathering of fighter jets and vehicles in a street lined with trees and buildings.

Twenty fighters were killed in the airstrikes that targeted rebel reinforcements, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the country’s unresolved civil war. Aleppo residents reported clashes and gunfire, with some fleeing the fighting.

Schools and government offices were closed Saturday as most people stayed indoors, according to Sham FM radio, a pro-government station. Bakeries were open.

In social media posts, the rebels were pictured outside the Aleppo Citadel, the medieval palace in the old city center and one of the largest in the world. In cellphone videos, the insurgents recorded themselves conversing with residents whose homes they visited to reassure them that they would not cause harm.

State media reported that a number of “terrorists”, including sleepers, have infiltrated parts of the city. Government troops chased them and arrested a number who posed for pictures near the city’s landmarks, state media said.

On a state television morning program on Saturday, commentators said army reinforcements and Russia’s aid will repel the “terrorist groups” that Turkey blames for supporting rebel advances in Aleppo and Idlib provinces.

Russian state news agency Tass quoted Oleg Ignasyuk, a Russian Defense Ministry official coordinating in Syria, as saying that Russian warplanes targeted and killed 200 militants who launched the offensive in the northwest on Friday. It gave no further details.

Aleppo has not been attacked by opposition forces since they were driven from eastern neighborhoods in 2016 after a grueling military campaign where the Syrian government forces were supported by Russia, Iran and its allied groups.

The attack on Aleppo followed weeks of simmering low-level violence, including government attacks on opposition-held areas. Turkey, which has supported Syrian opposition groups, failed in its diplomatic efforts to prevent the Syrian government attacks, which were seen as a violation of a 2019 agreement sponsored by Russia, Turkey and Iran to freeze the conflict line.

The offensive came as Iran-linked groups, primarily Lebanon’s Hezbollah, which has supported Syrian government forces since 2015, have been preoccupied with their own battles at home. A ceasefire in Hezbollah’s two-month war with Israel came into effect on Wednesday, the day Syrian opposition factions announced their offensive. Israel has also escalated its attacks against Hezbollah and Iran-related targets in Syria over the past 70 days.

Turkey’s state-run Anadolu news agency said the rebels have seized control of large parts of Aleppo and Idlib’s countryside.

The 2016 battle for Aleppo was a turning point in the war between Syrian government forces and rebel fighters after protests in 2011 against President Bashar Assad’s rule turned into all-out war.

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