Military says dozens of soldiers killed in attacks in northwest and it was regrouping to launch a ‘counterattack’.
Syria’s military has announced a “temporary troop withdrawal” in the northwestern city of Aleppo, where rebel groups launched a surprise offensive on government-held positions for the first time in years.
The military said on Saturday that dozens of its soldiers had been killed or wounded in fierce battles with “armed terrorist organisations” in the governorates of Aleppo and Idlib over the previous few days and that it was now regrouping, redeploying troops to strengthen its defence lines as it prepared a “counterattack”.
It said that rebel groups had launched “a broad attack from multiple axes on the Aleppo and Idlib fronts”, reporting clashes “over a strip exceeding 100km (60 miles)”.
The statement marked the military’s first public acknowledgement that opposition fighters led by the Hay’et Tahrir al-Shams (HTS) group had entered “large parts of neighbourhoods” of Aleppo in the lightning attack that began earlier this week.
On Saturday, a witness in Aleppo told Al Jazeera that rebel fighters were “combing” the city in search of soldiers. “Last night they had some prisoners of war, regime soldiers, but they took very good care of them and moved them out immediately so they wouldn’t be in any danger,” the witness said.
People in Aleppo were “confused because they hadn’t been following the news” and some “were “really happy that they could now go back to their homes that they had had to flee years ago”, according to the witness.
The rebel assault is the most intense fighting seen in northwestern Syria since 2020, when Russia and Turkiye agreed to a deal to de-escalate the conflict, government forces seizing areas previously controlled by opposition fighters.
HTS-led fighters carried out a surprise sweep through government-held towns and reached Aleppo nearly a decade after having been forced out of the city, opening the way for civilians to return to their homes.
The military had earlier claimed it repelled the major offensive, saying it had inflicted heavy losses on the rebels, who reported they had seized control of dozens of towns and villages in Aleppo and Idlib.
Syrian authorities closed Aleppo airport and cancelled all flights on Saturday, according to three military sources cited by the Reuters news agency.
The rebels also captured the Abu al-Duhur airbase in the Idlib governorate, which Al Jazeera’s Resul Serdar said was “symbolically … extremely important”.
Upheaval
James Dorsey, a specialist in Middle East politics at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University, told Al Jazeera that opposition fighters launched their offensive now to take advantage of the current upheaval in the region.
Al Jazeer’s Serdar explained that the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad was caught off guard by the swift rebel operation, attributing their rapid advance to Hezbollah and Iran being distracted by the conflicts in Gaza and Lebanon.
“Now the question is: will the regime or Russia or Iran let HTS have full control of the second-largest city in Syria, or are they going to hit back?” asked Serdar.
While there are still skirmishes in southern Aleppo, the central and northwestern parts of the city, never before captured by the rebels, are now fully under their control, said Serdar. “That this happened in just four days is unbelievable.”
HTS has become the strongest opposition group in northwestern Syria, controlling much of Idlib province near the Turkish border.
It is considered a “terrorist” organisation by Syria, the United States and Russia.
On Friday, Syrian state television said Russia was providing Syria’s military with air support.
