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BEIRUT (AP) – Thousands of Syrian insurgents took over most of it aleppo on Saturday, establishing positions in the country’s largest city and controlling its airport before expanding its shock offensive into a nearby province. According to fighters and activists, they faced little or no resistance from government troops.
A war monitor, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said insurgents led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham took control of Aleppo International Airport, the first international airport controlled by the insurgents. The fighters claimed they had taken over the airport and released photos from there.
Thousands of fighters also advanced, facing almost no opposition from government forces, to seize towns and villages in northern Hama, a province where they had a presence before being pushed out by government troops in 2016. They said on Saturday in the evening having entered the city of Hama.
A big shame for Assad
The swift and surprise offensive is a major embarrassment for Syrian President Bashar Assad and raises questions about the preparedness of his armed forces. The insurgent offensive launched from its stronghold in the northwest of the country appeared to have been planned for years. It also comes at a time when Assad’s allies were preoccupied with their own conflicts.
In his first public comments since the start of the offensive, published by the state news agency on Saturday evening, Assad said Syria would continue to “defend its stability and territorial integrity against terrorists and their supporters” . He added that Syria is capable of defeating them no matter how much their attacks intensify.
Turkey, a key backer of Syrian opposition groups, said its diplomatic efforts had failed to halt government attacks on opposition-held areas in recent weeks, which violated a de-escalation agreement sponsored by Russia, Iran and Ankara. Turkish security officials said a limited offensive by rebels was planned to halt government attacks and allow civilians to return, but the offensive expanded as Syrian government forces began to withdraw from their positions.
The insurgents, led by the Salafist jihadist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and including Turkish-backed fighters, launched their shock offensive on Wednesday. They first staged a dual assault on Aleppo and the Idlib countryside, entering Aleppo two days later and securing a strategic city that lies on the highway linking Syria’s largest city to the capital and the coast.
On Saturday evening, they seized at least four towns in the central province of Hama and claimed to have entered the provincial capital. The insurgents made an attempt to retake the areas they controlled in Hama in 2017, but failed.
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Preparing a counterattack
Syria’s armed forces said in a statement Saturday that to absorb the major attack on Aleppo and save lives, it redeployed troops and equipment and was preparing a counterattack. The statement acknowledged that the insurgents had entered large parts of the city, but said they had not established bases or checkpoints. Later on Saturday, the armed forces sought to dispel what they said were lies in reference to reports of the withdrawal or defection of their forces, saying the general command was fulfilling its duties in “fighting terrorist organizations”.
The return of the insurgents to Aleppo was the first since 2016, after a grueling military campaign in which Assad’s forces were backed by Russia, Iran and their allied groups.
The 2016 Battle of Aleppo marked a turning point in the war between Syrian government forces and rebel fighters after 2011 protests against Assad’s government turned into all-out war. After appearing to lose control of the country to the rebels, the battle for Aleppo secured Assad’s control in strategic areas of Syria, with opposition factions and their foreign supporters controlling areas on the periphery.
The lightning offensive threatened to reignite the country’s civil war, which had been at a standstill for years.
Late on Friday, witnesses said two airstrikes hit Aleppo’s city limits, targeting insurgent reinforcements and landing near residential areas. The Observatory said 20 fighters were killed.
The insurgents were filmed outside police headquarters in the city center and outside Aleppo’s citadel, the medieval palace in the old city center and one of the largest in the world. They tore down posters of Assad, trampling some and burning others.
The push into Aleppo followed weeks of low-level violence, including government attacks on opposition-held areas.
The offensive comes as Iran-linked groups, mainly 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 came into effect on Wednesday, the same day Syrian opposition factions announced their offensive. Israel has also stepped up its attacks against Hezbollah and Iran-linked targets in Syria over the past 70 days.
Insurgents raise flags over the citadel of Aleppo
Speaking from the heart of the city in Saadallah Aljabri Square, opposition fighter Mohammad Al Abdo said it was his first time back in Aleppo in 13 years, when his older brother died at the start of the war
“God willing, the rest of Aleppo province will be liberated” from government forces, he said.
There was little traffic in the city center on Saturday. Opposition fighters fired into the air in celebration, but there were no signs of clashes or government troops present.
Journalists in the city filmed the soldiers captured by the insurgents and the bodies of others killed in the battle.
Abdulkafi Alhamdo, a teacher who fled Aleppo in 2016 and returned on Friday night after learning the insurgents were inside, described “mixed feelings of pain, sadness and old memories”.
“When I entered Aleppo, I said to myself that this is impossible. How did that happen?”
Alhamdo said he walked around the city at night visiting the Aleppo citadel, where the insurgents raised their flags, a main square and Aleppo University, as well as the last place he was before he was forced out to leave for the field.
“I walked through the (empty) streets of Aleppo, shouting, ‘People, people of Aleppo.’ We are your children,” he told The Associated Press in a series of messages.
The city’s hospitals are full
Aleppo residents said they heard clashes and gunfire, but most stayed indoors. Some fled the fighting.
Schools and government offices were closed Saturday as most people stayed indoors, according to Sham FM radio, a pro-government station. The ovens were open. Witnesses said the insurgents deployed security forces around the city to prevent any acts of violence or looting.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said on Friday that Aleppo’s two key public hospitals were full of patients while many private facilities were closing.
In social media posts, the insurgents were photographed outside the citadel, the medieval palace in the city’s old center and one of the largest in the world. In cell phone videos, they recorded themselves having conversations with residents visiting the home, seeking to reassure them that they would cause no harm.
The Syrian Kurdish-led administration in the country’s east said nearly 3,000 people, mostly students, had arrived in their region after fleeing fighting in Aleppo, which has a sizable Kurdish population.
State media reported that several “terrorists”, including sleeper cells, had infiltrated parts of the city. Government troops chased them and arrested a number who were posing for photos near landmarks in the city, they said.
On a state television morning show on Saturday, commentators said military reinforcements and assistance from Russia would repel “terrorist groups”, blaming Turkey for supporting the insurgents’ push into the provinces of ‘Aleppo and Idlib.
Russian state news agency Tass quoted Oleg Ignasyuk, a Russian Defense Ministry official coordinating in Syria, as saying that Russian warplanes struck and killed 200 militants on Friday who had launched the offensive in the northwest friday He gave no further details.
