ALEPPO: Militants and their Turkish-backed allies reached Syria’s second city of Aleppo Friday, as they pressed a lightning offensive against forces of the Iranian and Russian-backed government.
The fighting is some of the deadliest in years, with 255 people killed, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Most of the dead have been combatants but the toll also includes 24 civilians, most killed in Russian air strikes.
The offensive began on Wednesday, the same day that a fragile ceasefire took effect in neighboring Lebanon between Israel and Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah.
By Friday, the militants and their allies had wrested control of more than 50 towns and villages in the north, according to the Britain-based Observatory, in the government’s biggest loss of territory in years.
They then entered western districts of Aleppo, a city of some two million people that was Syria’s pre-war manufacturing hub.
“Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS) and allied factions... were able to enter the outskirts of the Al-Hamdaniya and New Aleppo neighborhoods... after carrying out twin suicide attacks with two booby-trapped cars,” the war monitor said.
HTS, an Islamist alliance led by Al-Qaeda’s former Syria branch, shelled a student residence in the city, killing four civilians, state media reported.
Syrian and Russian warplanes launched intense air strikes on the rebel enclave around Idlib, where the militants are based, carrying out 23 raids, according to the Observatory.
Army reinforcements have arrived in Aleppo, a Syrian security official told AFP, requesting anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.
An army statement said troops had repelled the assault on the city and retaken some positions.
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said “more than 14,000 people — nearly half are children — have been displaced” by the violence.
Aleppo resident Sarmad, 51, told AFP he could hear “the sounds of missiles and artillery shelling around the clock.”
“We’re scared that war will break out and we’ll be displaced from our homes again,” he said.
Nasser Hamdo, 36, who works in a pastry shop, said he had been glued to the news since hostilities began.
On Thursday, the militants and their allies cut the highway linking Aleppo to the capital Damascus, some 300 kilometers (185 miles) south, the Observatory said.
“We’re worried that roads getting blocked could cause fuel prices to soar and prevent goods from reaching the city,” Hamdo said.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Friday described the situation in Aleppo as “an infringement on the sovereignty of Syria.”
He expressed support for “the government of Syria to quickly restore order in this district.”
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi pledged “continued support for the government, nation and army of Syria,” in a phone call with his Syrian counterpart Bassam Al-Sabbagh, according to a statement.
The Idlib area has been subject to a Turkish- and Russian-brokered truce since 2020. The ceasefire has been repeatedly violated but had largely held.
An AFP correspondent in the rebel enclave saw militants advancing in tanks as intense exchanges of fire took place in an area just seven kilometers (a little over four miles) from Aleppo.
AFP images showed abandoned army tanks and other military vehicles.
The correspondent said the militants and their Turkiye-backed allies took orders from a joint operations command.
Analyst Nick Heras, of the New Lines Institute for Strategy and Policy, said the fighters were “trying to preempt the possibility of a Syrian military campaign in the region of Aleppo.”
According to Heras, the Syrian government and its key backer Russia had been preparing for such a campaign.
Russia intervened in Syria in 2015, turning the tide of the civil war which broke out four years earlier in favor of the government, whose forces at the time had lost control of most of country.
Other interests are also at stake.
As well as Russia, Syrian President Bashar Assad has been propped up by Iran and allied militant groups, including Lebanon’s Hezbollah.
Iran-backed militias have a heavy presence in the Aleppo region after providing crucial ground support to the army in its recapture of rebel-held areas of the city in 2016.
Heras said anti-government forces are “in a better position to take and seize villages than Russian-backed Syrian government forces, while the Iranians are focused on Lebanon.”
Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman said government forces “were totally unprepared” for the attack.
“It is strange to see regime forces being dealt such big blows despite Russian air cover and early signs that HTS was going to launch this operation,” Abdel Rahman said.
“Were they depending on Hezbollah, which is now busy in Lebanon?”
Militants, allies enter Syria’s second city Aleppo in lightning assault
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Militants, allies enter Syria’s second city Aleppo in lightning assault
- The violence has killed 242 people, according to a Syrian war monitor
- The fighters had on Thursday cut the highway linking Aleppo to Syria’s capital Damascus
Fire at Jordan nursing home kills 6 residents, injures dozens
- An investigation was being conducted to identify the cause of the blaze
AMMAN: Six residents died and dozens were injured after a fire broke out a nursing home in Jordan, state news agency Petra reported.
The fire at the White Beds Society’s, or Al-Asirra Al-Baydaa, elderly home killed six elderly, badly injuring five and moderately injuring fifty-five more, according to Wafa Bani Mustafa, Minister of Social Development.
The fire spread engulfed the entire 80-square-meter center, which houses 111 people, the minister added.
The injured were taken to government hospitals for treatment, while the remaining elderly were moved to other centers.
An investigation was being conducted to identify the cause of the blaze, the minister said.
Russia in contact with Syrian militants, hopes to keep military bases, Interfax reports
- Contacts with Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham are ‘proceeding in constructive fashion’
MOSCOW Russia has established direct contact with the political committee of Syria’s Islamist militant group, Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham, the Interfax news agency quoted Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov as saying on Thursday.
Interfax reported that Bogdanov, speaking to journalists, also said Moscow aimed to maintain its military bases in Syria.
Bogdanov said contacts with HTS, the most powerful force in the country after the overthrow of President Bashar Assad, were “proceeding in constructive fashion.”
Russia, he said, hoped the group would fulfil its pledges to “guard against all excesses,” maintain order and ensure the safety of diplomats and other foreigners.
Bogdanov said Russia hoped to maintain its two bases in Syria – a naval base in Tartous and the Khmeimim Air Base near the port city of Latakia – to keep up efforts against international terrorism.
“The bases are still there, where they were on Syrian territory. No other decisions have been made for the moment,” he was quoted as saying.
“They were there at the Syrians’ request with the aim of fighting terrorists from the Islamic State. I am proceeding on the basis of the notion that everyone agrees that the fight against terrorism, and what remains of IS, is not over.”
Maintaining that fight, he said, “requires collective efforts and in this connection, our presence and the Khmeimim base played an important role in the context of the overall fight against international terrorism.”
Another Russian Deputy Foreign Minister, Sergei Vershinin, and the UN’s special envoy for Syria Geir Pedersen, called for measures to destabilize the situation in and around Syria, according to a statement on the foreign ministry’s website.
The statement said the two diplomats discussed by telephone finding a political settlement in a way to be determined by the Syrian people and ensuring Syria’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.
Syria’s militant victors expose ousted government’s drug trade
DAMASCUS: The dramatic collapse of Bashar Assad’s Syrian regime has thrown light into the dark corners of his rule, including the industrial-scale export of the banned drug captagon.
Victorious Islamist-led fighters have seized military bases and distribution hubs for the amphetamine-type stimulant, which has flooded the black market across the Middle East.
Led by the Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS) group, the militants say they found a vast haul of drugs and vowed to destroy them.
On Wednesday, HTS fighters allowed AFP journalists into a warehouse at a quarry on the outskirts of Damascus, where captagon pills were concealed inside electrical components for export.
“After we entered and did a sweep, and we found that this is a factory for Maher Assad and his partner Amer Khiti,” said black-masked fighter Abu Malek Al-Shami.
Maher Assad was a military commander and the deposed strongman’s brother, now presumed on the run. He is widely accused of being the power behind the lucrative captagon trade.
Syrian politician Khiti was placed under sanction in 2023 by the British government, which said he “controls multiple businesses in Syria which facilitate the production and smuggling of drugs.”
In a cavernous garage beneath the warehouse and loading bays, thousands of dusty beige captagon pills were packed into the copper coils of brand new household voltage stabilizers.
“We found a large number of devices that were stuffed with packages of captagon pills meant to be smuggled out of the country. It’s a huge quantity. It’s impossible to tell,” Shami said.
Above, in the warehouse, crates of cardboard boxes stood ready to allow the traffickers to disguise their cargo as pallet-loads of standard goods, alongside sacks and sacks of caustic soda.
Caustic soda, or sodium hydroxide, is a key ingredient in the production of methamphetamine, another stimulant.
Assad fell at the weekend to a lightning HTS offensive, but the revenue from selling captagon propped up Assad’s government throughout Syria’s 13 years of civil war.
Captagon turned Syria into the world’s largest narco state. It became by far Syria’s biggest export, dwarfing all its legal exports put together, according to estimates drawn from official data by AFP during a 2022 investigation.
The warehouse haul was massive, but smaller and still impressive stashes of captagon have also turned up in military facilities associated with units under Maher Assad’s command.
Journalists from AFP this week found a bonfire of captagon pills on the grounds of the Mazzeh air base, now in the hands of HTS fighters who descended on the capital Damascus from the north.
Behind the smoldering heap, in a ransacked air force building, more captagon lay alongside other illicit exports, including off-brand Viagra impotence remedies and poorly-forged $100 bills.
“As we entered the area we found a huge quantity of captagon. So we destroyed it and burned it. It’s a huge amount, brother,” said an HTS fighter using the nom de guerre “Khattab.”
“We destroyed and burned it because it’s harmful to people. It harms nature and people and humans.”
Khattab also stressed that HTS, which has formed a transitional government to replace the collapsed administration, does not want to harm its neighbors by exporting the drug — a trade worth billions of dollars.
UN says 1.1 million newly displaced in Syria since offensive that toppled Assad
BEIRUT: The United Nations humanitarian agency said Thursday that more than a million people, mostly women and children, had been newly displaced in Syria since militants launched an offensive ousting President Bashar Assad.
“As of 12 December, 1.1 million people have been newly displaced across the country since the start of the escalation of hostilities on 27 November. The majority are women and children,” the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said in a statement.
Gaza rescuers say Israeli strikes kill 58, hit flour trucks
- Around 30 people, most of them children, were wounded in the two strikes
GAZA STRIP: Gaza’s civil defense agency said a series of Israeli air strikes on Thursday killed at least 58 people, including 12 guards securing aid trucks, while the military said it targeted militants planning to hijack the vehicles.
The latest bloodshed came despite growing optimism that negotiations for a ceasefire and hostage release deal might finally succeed, with US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan saying on Thursday that the regional “context” had changed in favor of an agreement.
Seven guards were killed in a strike in Rafah, in southern Gaza, while another attack left five guards dead in nearby Khan Yunis, agency spokesman Mahmud Basal said.
“The (Israeli) occupation once again targeted those securing the aid trucks,” Basal told AFP, though the military said it “does not strike humanitarian aid trucks.”
Basal added that around 30 people, most of them children, were wounded in the two strikes.
“The trucks carrying flour were on their way to UNRWA warehouses,” Basal noted, referring to the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees.
Witnesses later told AFP that residents looted flour from the trucks after the strikes.
The military said its forces “conducted precise strikes” overnight on armed Hamas militants present in an Israeli-designated humanitarian zone in southern Gaza.
“All of the terrorists that were eliminated were members of Hamas and planned to violently hijack humanitarian aid trucks and transfer them to Hamas in support of continuing terrorist activity,” a military statement said.
The United Nations and aid agencies have repeatedly warned about the acute humanitarian crisis in the besieged Gaza Strip, exacerbated by the war that has persisted for more than 14 months.
“Conditions for people across the Gaza Strip are appalling and apocalyptic,” UNRWA spokeswoman Louise Wateridge told journalists during a visit to Nuseirat in central Gaza.
She added that life-saving aid to “besieged areas in north Gaza governorate has been largely blocked” since the Israeli military launched a sweeping assault there in early October.
In southern Gaza, UNRWA said earlier this week it had successfully delivered enough food aid for 200,000 people.
But on Thursday it said “a serious incident” meant that only one truck out of a convoy of 70 traveling along Gaza’s southern border reached its destination.
The agency did not provide any details on the incident, but called on “all parties to ensure safe, unimpeded and uninterrupted” aid deliveries.
As diplomacy aimed at ending the war appeared to be gaining pace again, the violence continued.
The civil defense agency said Israeli air strikes on two homes, near Nuseirat refugee camp — which was again hit later in the evening — and Gaza City killed 21 people.
Fifteen people, at least six of them children, died “as a result of an Israeli bombing” of a building sheltering displaced people near Nuseirat, Bassal said.
Bassam Al-Habash, a relative of the dead in Nuseirat said: “These people are innocent, they are not wanted. They have nothing to do with the war.”
“They are civilians, and this is not a war between two armies, but a war armed with weapons, planes and Western support against a defenseless people who own nothing.”
Another strike late on Thursday killed at least 25 people and wounded 50 others in the Nuseirat refugee camp, the civil defense said.
In the latest diplomatic effort to secure an end to the violence, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution on Wednesday calling for an immediate and unconditional ceasefire.
The non-binding resolution was rejected by the United States, Israel’s main military backer.
However, in recent days, there have been indications that previously stalled ceasefire negotiations could be revived.
Families of the 96 hostages still in Gaza since the Hamas attack that triggered the war, including 34 the Israeli military says are dead, are pressing for their release.
US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, who visited Israel on Thursday and met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said he “got the sense” that the Israeli leader was “ready to do a deal.”
He also said that the Hamas approach to negotiations had changed, attributing it to the overthrow of their ally Bashar Assad in Syria and the ceasefire that went into effect in the war between Israel and another ally, Lebanese group Hezbollah.
Militants abducted 251 hostages during the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, which killed 1,208 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.
This count includes hostages who died or were killed while held in Gaza.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 44,805 people in Gaza, a majority of them civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry that the United Nations considers reliable.
