Aleppo, Syria
It hasn’t happened since 2016. Observatory reports that Russians are bombing Aleppo, helping the Syrian government fight rebels.
A Russia is bomb the city of Aleppo, the second largest in Syria, helping the government in Damascus to fight the rebels who managed to control different neighborhoods of this city, the scene of intense fighting in the last few days.
According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (OSDH), these are the first bombings made by the Russian and Syrian military since 2016, when forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad secured control of that country’s second largest city with support and cover from Russia and Iranian-affiliated militias.
“The Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and the allied rebel factions took control of most of the city, government buildings and prisons”, stated the OSDH, cited by international news agencies.
According to this non-governmental organization based in London and an extensive network of informants in the country, the joint air strikes by Syria and Russia were mainly aimed at the Al Furqan neighborhood, in western Aleppo, where alliance fighters of the Organization for the Liberation of the Levant and other factions supported by Türkiye were coming in.
It was an offensive surprising, of “shock”, as described by ; but however, cites , the OSDH indicates that the rebels already control most of the city.
The bombings follow Russia’s announcement that its air force was bombing “extremist” groups in Syria in support of regime forces, Russian agencies reported late last week.
The ‘jihadists’ and their allies entered Aleppo, Syria’s second city, on Friday, after two days of a lightning offensive against the regime of Bashar al-Assad, which ended years of relative calm in northwestern Syria. .
A Russia is the most important military supporter of the regime of Bashar al-Assad, which has since 2015 helped gain the upper hand in the Syrian civil war.
According to the OSDH, the fighting in recent days has caused more than 255 dead and they are the most violent since 2020 in northwestern Syria, where the province of Aleppo, mostly in the hands of the Assad regime, is adjacent to the last major rebel and ‘jihadist’ stronghold of Idlib.
The ‘jihadist’ group HTS (Organization for the Liberation of the Levant, also known as Al-Qaida in Syria) and allied groups, some of which are close to Turkey, had arrived at the city’s gates in the morning, “after having carried out two attacks suicide bombers with booby-trapped cars.”
Iran, through its Minister of Foreign Affairs, Abbas Aragchi, last week conveyed to his Syrian counterpart, Bassam al-Sabbagh, Tehran’s support in the fight against the HTS group and other militias in the Aleppo region.
