Rebels seized Aleppo airport and dozens of nearby towns yesterday after overrunning most of Syria’s second city of Aleppo, a war monitor said.
Damascus ally Moscow responded with its first air strikes on Aleppo since 2016 as the fighters and their Turkish-backed allies pressed a lightning offensive they launched on Wednesday as a ceasefire took effect in neighbouring Lebanon.
The fighting has killed at least 327 people, most of them combatants but also including 44 civilians, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
“Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and allied factions... took control of most of the city and government centres and prisons without meeting great resistance,” the Britain-based war monitor said.
They also overran Aleppo airport after government forces withdrew, and took control of “dozens of strategic towns without any resistance”, it added.
The Syrian army confirmed that the rebels had entered “large parts” of the city of around 2mn people, adding that “dozens of men from our armed forces were killed and others wounded”.
HTS is a alliance led by Al Qaeda’s former Syria branch which, with its allies, has long controlled a rebel enclave in the Idlib region of the northwest.
Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP that “at this moment, the Syrian regime appears to have been abandoned by its main allies Iran and Russia, with Moscow until now carrying out symbolic strikes”.
Russia carried out air strikes in parts of Aleppo overnight, the Observatory said.
Later yesterday, “at least 16 civilians were killed and 20 others wounded” in fresh strikes.
France called on all sides to protect civilians in Aleppo.
AFPTV footage showed fires burning after the strikes, while AFP images showed rebels outside the city’s landmark citadel.
Fighters were seen posing with a rebel flag outside a police station bearing a large portrait of Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, and standing below a partially burning billboard of the president.
The Syrian army said the rebels launched “a broad attack from multiple axes on the Aleppo and Idlib fronts” and reported fierce battles “over a strip exceeding 100 kilometres”.
As the fighting raged for a fourth day, the Observatory said that the government had lost 100 troops and militiamen, while the rebels had lost 183.
It said the rebels had taken dozens of towns across the north, including Maaret al-Numan and Khan Sheikhun.
“We’ve been waiting for this” for years, rebel fighter Mohamed Hammadi said in a square in Aleppo, Syria’s pre-war manufacturing hub. The 29-year-old said the offensive was “to liberate Aleppo... and to lift the oppression against our brothers in the city”.
“We are going to clear all of Syria, God willing,” he added.
Pro-government radio station Sham FM reported that “armed groups were present in a number of streets and neighbourhoods in Aleppo”.
“Most civilians are avoiding leaving their homes and public and private institutions in the city are almost completely shut,” it added.
The Observatory said “the governor of Aleppo and the police and security branch commanders withdrew from the city centre”.
Some rebel fighters let off volleys of celebratory gunfire as they reached the city centre, where a rebel flag hung from a traffic light, images showed.
Western districts of Aleppo had been under rebel control until 2016, when an army siege forced a negotiated evacuation.
Women walk along a damaged site in Aleppo, after the Syrian army said that dozens of its soldiers had been killed in a major attack by rebels who swept into the city, in Syria, yesterday.