BEIRUT: The leader of Syria’s most powerful insurgent group Wednesday toured the seized city of Aleppo in a surprise visit, for the first time since the group captured large parts of the city last weekend, as fierce fighting intensifies in the government-led counter-offensive in northern Hama.
Abu Mohammed Al-Golani, who heads jihadi group Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham, greeted crowds of supporters near the city’s iconic citadel as he smiled and waved in dark green military garb. Surrounded by masked gunmen in flak jackets, men and boys chanted “God is great” as he walked through the heart of Syria’s largest city.
The latest flareup in Syria’s long civil war comes after forces opposed to Syrian President Bashar Assad ousted his troops from Aleppo, the country’s largest, as well as seized towns and villages in southern parts of the northwestern Idlib province.
The offensive is being led by HTS as well as an umbrella group of Turkish-backed Syrian militias called the Syrian National Army. For years, both have entrenched themselves in northwest Idlib province and parts of northern Aleppo, as the battered country reeled from years of political and military stalemates.
The war between Assad and his foreign backers and the array of armed opposition forces seeking his overthrow has killed an estimated half-million people over the past 13 years.
Elsewhere, Syria said its counteroffensive pushed back insurgents attempting to advance to the strategic central city of Hama, while the insurgents said they captured more Syrian troops and Iran-backed militants in fierce battles.
Syrian state media SANA on Wednesday said insurgents retreated some 20 kilometers (12 miles) from government-held Hama, Syria’s fourth largest city, as government troops backed by Russian airpower entrenched themselves in the outskirts. Fierce fighting has raged for days as Damascus fears that the insurgents will make their way into the city as they did over the weekend into Aleppo.
A Syrian photographer working for the German news agency dpa was killed in an airstrike near the city of Hama, the agency said Wednesday. Anas Alkharboutli, 32, has long documented Syria’s civil war, which started after a brutal crackdown on a popular uprising against Assad in 2011. He has worked for dpa since 2017.
The insurgency through its Military Operations Department channel on the Telegram app said they captured five Iran-backed militants, of whom two were from Afghanistan, as well as three Syrian troops from its 25th Special Mission Forces Division in eastern Hama. The claims could not be independently confirmed.
If the insurgents seize Hama city and control the province, it could leave the coastal cities of Tartous and Lattakia isolated from the rest of the country. Lattakia is a key political stronghold for Assad and Syria’s Alawite community and a strategic Russian naval base.
Tens of thousands have been displaced by the fighting, which started last week, Geir Pedersen, the UN special envoy for Syria, said Tuesday.
“If we do not see de-escalation and a rapid move to a serious political process, involving the Syrian parties and the key international players, then I fear we will see a deepening of the crisis,” Pedersen said in an address to the UN Security Council. “Syria will be in grave danger of further division, deterioration, and destruction.”
About three thousand displaced people from the Hama countryside and Aleppo made their way to the city of Homs, with many more on the way. Those who arrived and found shelter in schools told The Associated Press that they spent hours in traffic, many struggling to afford surging prices of petrol.
Nidal Assaf, 38, fled the northern Hama countryside where the insurgency took over several towns and villages. Speaking from a school-turned-shelter in Homs, he said the residents and army couldn’t handle the fighters, and had to flee amid the fighting with his family and tens of relatives.
“We tried to resist both civilians and military, and then people eventually had to flee,” he said. “It was very difficult to reach our destination because of the strikes and the traffic.”
Near Assaf was Youssef Choueib, who fled Aleppo to Homs for the third time since 2011: first when rebels last took the city, and then after a massive earthquake in 2023 rattled northern Syria and Turkiye. Choueib said he has family stuck in Aleppo. “They called me many times, but they said they couldn’t leave,” Choueib told the AP. “They tell me there is no bread. There is no food at all.”
Turkiye, which backs Syria’s opposition, has called on Assad to reconcile with opposition forces and include them in any political solution to end the conflict.
Ankara has been seeking to normalize ties with Syria to address security threats from groups affiliated with Kurdish militants along its southern border and to help ensure the safe return of more than 3 million Syrian refugees. Assad has insisted that Turkiye’s withdrawal of its military forces from northern Syria be a condition for any normalization between the two countries.
Damascus views the insurgents as terrorists, and Assad has vowed to respond to the insurgency with an iron fist.
Turkish and Iranian officials met earlier this week, in a bid to reach a solution to de-escalate the flareup. Arab countries bordering Syria who once backed groups that tried to overthrow Assad, have expressed their concern of the conflict’s regional impacts, and have backed the president.
Syria’s insurgency leader tours seized city of Aleppo, as fierce battles intensify near Hama
https://arab.news/z4mak
Syria’s insurgency leader tours seized city of Aleppo, as fierce battles intensify near Hama
- Abu Mohammed Al-Golani, who heads Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham, greeted crowds of supporters near the city’s iconic citadel
- Syrian state media says insurgents retreat some 20 kilometers from government-held Hama, Syria’s fourth largest city
Israel's settler movement takes victory lap as a sparse outpost becomes a settlement within a month
- Smotrich, who has been in charge of Israeli settlement policy for the past three years, has overseen an aggressive construction and expansion binge aimed at dismantling any remaining hopes of establishing a Palestinian state in the occupied West Bank
YATZIV SETTLEMENT, West Bank: Celebratory music blasting from loudspeakers mixed with the sounds of construction, almost drowning out calls to prayer from a mosque in the Palestinian town across this West Bank valley.
Orthodox Jewish women in colorful head coverings, with babies on their hips, shared platters of fresh vegetables as soldiers encircled the hilltop, keeping guard.
The scene Monday reflected the culmination of Israeli settlers’ long campaign to turn this site, overlooking the Palestinian town of Beit Sahour, into a settlement. Over the years, they fended off plans to build a hospital for Palestinian children on the land, always holding tight to the hope the land would one day become theirs.
That moment is now, they say.
Smotrich goes on settlement spree
After two decades of efforts, it took just a month for their new settlement, called “Yatziv,” to go from an unauthorized outpost of a few mobile homes to a fully recognized settlement. Fittingly, the new settlement’s name means “stable” in Hebrew.
“We are standing stable here in Israel,” Finance Minister and settler leader Bezalel Smotrich told The Associated Press at Monday’s inauguration ceremony. “We’re going to be here forever. We will never establish a Palestinian state here.”
With leaders like Smotrich holding key positions in Israel’s government and establishing close ties with the Trump administration, settlers are feeling the wind at their backs.
Smotrich, who has been in charge of Israeli settlement policy for the past three years, has overseen an aggressive construction and expansion binge aimed at dismantling any remaining hopes of establishing a Palestinian state in the occupied West Bank.
While most of the world considers the settlements illegal, their impact on the ground is clear, with Palestinians saying the ever-expanding construction hems them in and makes it nearly impossible to establish a viable independent state. The Palestinians seek the West Bank, captured by Israel in 1967, as part of a future state.
With Netanyahu and Trump, settlers feel emboldened
Settlers had long set their sights on the hilltop, thanks to its position in a line of settlements surrounding Jerusalem and because they said it was significant to Jewish history. But they put up the boxy prefab homes in November because days earlier, Palestinian attackers had stabbed an Israeli to death at a nearby junction.
The attack created an impetus to justify the settlement, the local settlement council chair, Yaron Rosenthal, told AP. With the election of Israel’s far-right government in late 2022, Trump’s return to office last year and the November attack, conditions were ripe for settlers to make their move, Rosenthal said.
“We understood that there was an opportunity,” he said. “But we didn’t know it would happen so quickly.”
“Now there is the right political constellation for this to happen.”
Smotrich announced approval of the outpost, along with 18 others, on Dec. 21. That capped 20 years of effort, said Nadia Matar, a settler activist.
“Shdema was nearly lost to us,” said Matar, using the name of an Israeli military base at the site. “What prevented that outcome was perseverance.”
Back in 2006, settlers were infuriated upon hearing that Israel’s government was in talks with the US to build a Palestinian children’s hospital on the land, said Hagit Ofran, a director at Peace Now, an anti-settlement watchdog group, especially as the US Agency for International Development was funding a “peace park” at the base of the hill.
The mayor of Beit Sahour urged the US Consulate to pressure Israel to begin hospital construction, while settlers began weekly demonstrations at the site calling on Israel to quash the project, according to consulate files obtained through WikiLeaks.
It was “interesting” that settlers had “no religious, legal, or ... security claim to that land,” wrote consulate staffer Matt Fuller at the time, in an email he shared with the AP. “They just don’t want the Palestinians to have it — and for a hospital no less — a hospital that would mean fewer permits for entry to Jerusalem for treatment.”
The hospital was never built. The site was converted into a military base after the Netanyahu government came to power in 2009. From there, settlers quickly established a foothold by creating makeshift cultural center at the site, putting on lectures, readings and exhibits
Speaking to the AP, Ehud Olmert, the Israeli prime minister at the time the hospital was under discussion, said that was the tipping point.
“Once it is military installation, it is easier than to change its status into a new outpost, a new settlement and so on,” he said.
Olmert said Netanyahu — who has served as prime minister nearly uninterrupted since then — was “committed to entirely different political directions from the ones that I had,” he said. “They didn’t think about cooperation with the Palestinians.”
Palestinians say the land is theirs
The continued legalization of settlements and spiking settler violence — which rose by 27 percent in 2025, according to Israel’s military — have cemented a fearful status quo for West Bank Palestinians.
The land now home to Yatziv was originally owned by Palestinians from Beit Sahour, said the town’s mayor, Elias Isseid.
“These lands have been owned by families from Beit Sahour since ancient times,” he said.
Isseid worries more land loss is to come. Yatziv is the latest in a line of Israeli settlements to pop up around Beit Sahour, all of which are connected by a main highway that runs to Jerusalem without entering Palestinian villages. The new settlement “poses a great danger to our children, our families,” he said.
A bypass road, complete with a new yellow gate, climbs up to Yatziv. The peace park stands empty.
