Syrian rebels seize territory from government in renewed offensive
Summary
The surprise assault occurred around Aleppo, a government-held city and one of the focal points of fighting in Syria’s civil war.
Rebels in Syria launched a large-scale attack on Assad government forces, storming a military base and seizing control of swaths of territory in the country’s northwest in the first major outbreak of fighting between the two sides in recent years.
The Syrian government said Thursday that its forces are confronting the continuing attack.
Syria is still in a state of civil war, which broke out in 2011, though it has widely stabilized and diminished in intensity since the peak of fighting last decade. While President Bashar al-Assad’s forces—backed by Russian air power and Iran-allied militias—have clawed back control over much of the country, several rebel groups of varying ideological, sectarian and ethnic alignments control some areas, particularly in the country’s war-torn north.
This week’s surprise flare-up, the first major one since 2020, occurred in Aleppo province, one of the focal points of fighting in Syria’s civil war in the last decade. It involved thousands of antigovernment fighters, including from Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, a Sunni Islamist group that the Trump administration in 2018 designated as a foreign terrorist organization. HTS is an offshoot of the Nusra Front, which the U.S. considers an affiliate of al Qaeda.
The antigovernment militias said they captured several government tanks, military vehicles and at least six members of Syrian government forces in the new offensive launched on Wednesday. The rebels had advanced to within about 3 miles of the northern city of Aleppo as of Wednesday, according to the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank.
The new offensive comes on the eve of Donald Trump again becoming president—a shift that could also affect Syria. During Trump’s previous term in power, he had decided to remove U.S. forces fighting Islamic State from Syria, before reversing that decision. American troops are scrambling again to contain a resurgence of Islamic State in the region.
The White Helmets, a volunteer Syrian civil-defense organization, said hundreds of families have been displaced as a result of the fighting, which it said included Syrian government airstrikes and artillery that have also killed several civilians.
The new rebel offensive comes as Israel has intensified its strikes in Syria targeting the supply of weapons for Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement. The Lebanese group also helped Assad suppress the rebellion against him and now has operatives in Syria. In the past few months, tens of thousands of Syrian refugees have fled back to Syria from Lebanon when it was battered by Israeli airstrikes.
Saleh al-Batati contributed to this article.
Write to Omar Abdel-Baqui at omar.abdel-baqui@wsj.com and Jared Malsin at jared.malsin@wsj.com
