Syrian rebels breached the major city of Aleppo on Friday, according to the fighters and a war monitor, raising fears that the nation’s long-running civil war is reigniting with an intensity not seen in years.
One rebel group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, took control of “more than half of Aleppo” within hours on Friday without resistance from Syrian government forces, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a war monitoring group based in Britain.
Government forces and their Russian allies earlier launched intense airstrikes on opposition-held territory on Friday, including 23 attacks on the city of Idlib, according to the Observatory. The Russian government confirmed that it was bombing Syrian rebels, but did not specify where.
Antigovernment fighters managed earlier on Friday to enter five neighborhoods in the western part of Aleppo after detonating two car bombs targeting government soldiers, according to the rebels and the Observatory.
The official Syrian news agency, SANA, reported that four people were killed when rebels fired on Aleppo University, in the western part of the city.
The United Nations’ humanitarian agency said that Aleppo’s international airport and some of its hospitals were closed, other hospitals were near capacity and security within the city was “rapidly deteriorating.”
The rebel offensive launched on Wednesday is the most serious challenge to President Bashar al-Assad’s regime in years.
And the timing of it has raised questions about whether the rebels are trying to take advantage of weakness across an alliance with Iran at the center, and groups like Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Syrian regime closely aligned with it.
But rebels said they had been preparing the offensive for months. Weapons and money have long flowed from Iran across Syria’s borders to Hezbollah in Lebanon, part of a so-called “axis of resistance” that includes the Palestinian armed group Hamas in Gaza.
Iran and Hezbollah also provided vital military support to Mr. al-Assad that helped him survive the civil war. But now, Hezbollah, Hamas and Iran have all been weakened by more than a year of conflict with Israel. A cease-fire this week halted more than 13 months of war between Israel and Hezbollah while Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza continues.
Israel has been bombing Syria for months, targeting Iranian commanders and fighters in the country and weapons shipments transiting through Syria to Hezbollah.
