BEIRUT: Regime forces upped the pressure on two of the last opposition bastions in Syria, with airstrikes in Idlib province and a move to break a siege near Damascus Monday.
Syrian and Russian aircraft pounded targets in the northwestern region of Idlib, pressing a week-old operation targeting the last province in the country to escape government control.
Raids Sunday left “at least 21 dead, including eight children and 11 members of the same family" west of the town of Sinjar in the southeast of the province, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
“Regime and Russian strikes are continuing today on several parts of Idlib” province, Rami Abdel Rahman, the head of the Britain-based monitoring organization, told AFP.
Russian-backed regime forces launched an operation on the edge of Idlib province in the last days of 2017 and have retaken villages every day since.
After the collapse of Daesh group in both Syria and Iraq late last year, President Bashar Assad’s regime is bent on restoring its grip over the country.
Idlib province, which borders Turkey, is almost entirely controlled by anti-government forces that are dominated by an outfit known as Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS).
An explosion on Sunday in the city of Idlib at a base for the group Ajnad Al-Qawqaz made up of fighters from the Caucasus that operates alongside HTS, left at least 34 dead, including 19 civilians, the Observatory said.
The initial death toll for the attack, the origins of which remain unclear, was 23 but the number went up on Monday when more bodies were found in the wreckage.
Abdel Rahman said the casualty count could yet rise because more victims were believed to be buried under the rubble and many of the wounded were in critical condition.
“Rescue teams are still sifting through the wreckage,” he said.
It was not immediately clear whether the blast was caused by airstrikes or was the result of the kind of internal clashes that sometimes break out between different opposition factions.
After shrinking to barely a sixth of the country at the height of the nearly seven-year-old conflict, the areas under government control now cover more than 50 percent of Syrian territory.
Another pocket where opposition groups are still holding out, however, is Eastern Ghouta, a semi-rural area east of the capital Damascus that is home to some 400,000 people.
Rebels led by the Jaish Al-Islam group had in recent days surrounded the army’s only military base in the area but the state news agency SANA said Monday the siege had been broken.
“Units from the Syrian Arab Army have brought an end to the encirclement of the Armored Vehicles Base in Harasta,” it said, adding that operations were ongoing to fully secure the base.
According to the Observatory, the fighting in Harasta since the base was surrounded in late December left 72 regime fighters and 87 opposition men dead.
The shelling and bombardment of besieged Eastern Ghouta, where the humanitarian conditions have sharply deteriorated in recent months, has also claimed a heavy toll on civilians.
The latest casualties came on Monday when airstrikes killed a child and two other civilians in Madira, a village in Eastern Ghouta, the Observatory said.
More than 340,000 people have been killed and millions have been driven from their homes since Syria’s conflict erupted with anti-government protests in 2011.
![]()
Syria regime unleashes its brutal air power on Idlib
Syria regime unleashes its brutal air power on Idlib
A Kurdish-majority neighborhood in Syria recovers from clashes with hope for the future
ALEPPO: A month after clashes rocked a Kurdish-majority neighborhood in Syria ‘s second-largest city of Aleppo, most of the tens of thousands of residents who fled the fighting between government forces and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces have returned — an unusually quick turnaround in a country where conflict has left many displaced for years.
“Ninety percent of the people have come back,” Aaliya Jaafar, a Kurdish resident of the Sheikh Maqsoud neighborhood who runs a hair salon, said Saturday. “And they didn’t take long. This was maybe the shortest displacement in Syria.”
Her family only briefly left their house when government forces launched a drone strike on a lot next door where weapons were stored, setting off explosions.
The Associated Press visited the community that was briefly at the center of Syria’s fragile transition from years of civil war as the new government tries to assert control over the country and gain the trust of minority groups anxious about their security.
Lessons learned
The clashes broke out Jan. 6 in the predominantly Kurdish neighborhoods of Sheikh Maqsoud, Achrafieh and Bani Zaid after the government and the SDF reached an impasse in talks on how to merge Syria’s largest remaining armed group into the national army. Security forces captured the neighborhoods after several days of intense fighting during which at least 23 people were killed and more than 140,000 people displaced.
However, Syria’s new government took measures to avoid civilians being harmed, unlike during previous outbreaks of violence between its forces and other groups on the coast and in the southern province of Sweida, during which hundreds of civilians from the Alawite and Druze religious minorities were killed in sectarian revenge attacks.
Before entering the contested Aleppo neighborhoods, the Syrian army opened corridors for civilians to flee.
Ali Sheikh Ahmad, a former member of the SDF-affiliated local police force who runs a secondhand clothing shop in Sheikh Maqsoud, was among those who left. He and his family returned a few days after the fighting stopped.
At first, he said, residents were afraid of revenge attacks after Kurdish forces withdrew and handed over the neighborhood to government forces. But that has not happened. A ceasefire agreement between Damascus and the SDF has been holding, and the two sides have made progress toward political and military integration.
“We didn’t have any serious problems like what happened on the coast or in Sweida,” Sheikh Ahmad said. The new security forces “treated us well,” and residents’ fears began to dissipate.
Jaafar agreed that residents had been afraid at first but that government forces “didn’t harm anyone, to be honest, and they imposed security, so people were reassured.”
The neighborhood’s shops have since reopened and traffic moves normally, but the checkpoint at the neighborhood’s entrance is now manned by government forces instead of Kurdish fighters.
Residents, both Kurds and Arabs, chatted with neighbors along the street. An Arab man who said he was named Saddam after the late Iraqi dictator — known for oppressing the Kurds — smiled as his son and a group of Kurdish children played with a dirty but friendly orange kitten.
Other children played with surgical staplers from a neighborhood hospital that was targeted during the recent fighting, holding them like toy guns. The government accused the SDF of taking over the hospital and using it as a military site, while the SDF said it was sheltering civilians.
One boy, looking pleased with himself, emerged from an alleyway carrying the remnant of an artillery shell.
Economic woes remain
On Friday, SDF leader Mazloum Abdi said he had held a “very productive meeting” with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad Al-Shibani on the sidelines of a security conference in Munich to discuss progress made on the integration agreement.
While the security situation is calm, residents said their economic plight has worsened. Many previously relied on jobs with the SDF-affiliated local authorities, who are no longer in charge. And small businesses suffered after the clashes drove away customers and interrupted electricity and other services.
“The economic situation has really deteriorated,” Jaafar said. “For more than a month, we’ve barely worked at all.”
Others are taking a longer view. Sheikh Ahmad said he hopes that if the ceasefire remains in place and the political situation stabilizes, he will be able to return to his original home in the town of Afrin near the border with Turkiye, which his family fled during a 2018 Turkish offensive against Kurdish forces.
Like many Syrians. Sheikh Ahmad has been displaced multiple times since mass protests against the government of then-President Bashar Assad spiraled into a brutal 14-year civil war.
Assad was ousted in November 2024 in an insurgent offensive, but the country has continued to see sporadic outbreaks of violence, and the new government has struggled to win the trust of religious and ethnic minorities.
Hopes for reconciliation
Last month, interim President Ahmad Al-Sharaa issued a decree strengthening the rights of Syria’s Kurdish minority, including recognizing Kurdish as a national language along with Arabic and adopting Nowruz, a traditional celebration of spring and renewal marked by Kurds around the region, as an official holiday. Kurds make up about 10 percent of Syria’s population.
The decree also restored the citizenship of tens of thousands of Kurds in northeastern Al-Hasakah province after they were stripped of it during the 1962 census
Sheikh Ahmad said he was encouraged by Al-Sharaa’s attempts to reassure the Kurds that they are equal citizens and hopes to see more than tolerance among Syria’s different communities.
“We want something better than that. We want people to love each other. We’ve had enough of wars after 15 years. It’s enough,” he said.
“Ninety percent of the people have come back,” Aaliya Jaafar, a Kurdish resident of the Sheikh Maqsoud neighborhood who runs a hair salon, said Saturday. “And they didn’t take long. This was maybe the shortest displacement in Syria.”
Her family only briefly left their house when government forces launched a drone strike on a lot next door where weapons were stored, setting off explosions.
The Associated Press visited the community that was briefly at the center of Syria’s fragile transition from years of civil war as the new government tries to assert control over the country and gain the trust of minority groups anxious about their security.
Lessons learned
The clashes broke out Jan. 6 in the predominantly Kurdish neighborhoods of Sheikh Maqsoud, Achrafieh and Bani Zaid after the government and the SDF reached an impasse in talks on how to merge Syria’s largest remaining armed group into the national army. Security forces captured the neighborhoods after several days of intense fighting during which at least 23 people were killed and more than 140,000 people displaced.
However, Syria’s new government took measures to avoid civilians being harmed, unlike during previous outbreaks of violence between its forces and other groups on the coast and in the southern province of Sweida, during which hundreds of civilians from the Alawite and Druze religious minorities were killed in sectarian revenge attacks.
Before entering the contested Aleppo neighborhoods, the Syrian army opened corridors for civilians to flee.
Ali Sheikh Ahmad, a former member of the SDF-affiliated local police force who runs a secondhand clothing shop in Sheikh Maqsoud, was among those who left. He and his family returned a few days after the fighting stopped.
At first, he said, residents were afraid of revenge attacks after Kurdish forces withdrew and handed over the neighborhood to government forces. But that has not happened. A ceasefire agreement between Damascus and the SDF has been holding, and the two sides have made progress toward political and military integration.
“We didn’t have any serious problems like what happened on the coast or in Sweida,” Sheikh Ahmad said. The new security forces “treated us well,” and residents’ fears began to dissipate.
Jaafar agreed that residents had been afraid at first but that government forces “didn’t harm anyone, to be honest, and they imposed security, so people were reassured.”
The neighborhood’s shops have since reopened and traffic moves normally, but the checkpoint at the neighborhood’s entrance is now manned by government forces instead of Kurdish fighters.
Residents, both Kurds and Arabs, chatted with neighbors along the street. An Arab man who said he was named Saddam after the late Iraqi dictator — known for oppressing the Kurds — smiled as his son and a group of Kurdish children played with a dirty but friendly orange kitten.
Other children played with surgical staplers from a neighborhood hospital that was targeted during the recent fighting, holding them like toy guns. The government accused the SDF of taking over the hospital and using it as a military site, while the SDF said it was sheltering civilians.
One boy, looking pleased with himself, emerged from an alleyway carrying the remnant of an artillery shell.
Economic woes remain
On Friday, SDF leader Mazloum Abdi said he had held a “very productive meeting” with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad Al-Shibani on the sidelines of a security conference in Munich to discuss progress made on the integration agreement.
While the security situation is calm, residents said their economic plight has worsened. Many previously relied on jobs with the SDF-affiliated local authorities, who are no longer in charge. And small businesses suffered after the clashes drove away customers and interrupted electricity and other services.
“The economic situation has really deteriorated,” Jaafar said. “For more than a month, we’ve barely worked at all.”
Others are taking a longer view. Sheikh Ahmad said he hopes that if the ceasefire remains in place and the political situation stabilizes, he will be able to return to his original home in the town of Afrin near the border with Turkiye, which his family fled during a 2018 Turkish offensive against Kurdish forces.
Like many Syrians. Sheikh Ahmad has been displaced multiple times since mass protests against the government of then-President Bashar Assad spiraled into a brutal 14-year civil war.
Assad was ousted in November 2024 in an insurgent offensive, but the country has continued to see sporadic outbreaks of violence, and the new government has struggled to win the trust of religious and ethnic minorities.
Hopes for reconciliation
Last month, interim President Ahmad Al-Sharaa issued a decree strengthening the rights of Syria’s Kurdish minority, including recognizing Kurdish as a national language along with Arabic and adopting Nowruz, a traditional celebration of spring and renewal marked by Kurds around the region, as an official holiday. Kurds make up about 10 percent of Syria’s population.
The decree also restored the citizenship of tens of thousands of Kurds in northeastern Al-Hasakah province after they were stripped of it during the 1962 census
Sheikh Ahmad said he was encouraged by Al-Sharaa’s attempts to reassure the Kurds that they are equal citizens and hopes to see more than tolerance among Syria’s different communities.
“We want something better than that. We want people to love each other. We’ve had enough of wars after 15 years. It’s enough,” he said.
Latest updates
Recommended
© 2026 SAUDI RESEARCH & PUBLISHING COMPANY, All Rights Reserved And subject to Terms of Use Agreement.