Syria’s military has announced a “temporary troop withdrawal” in the northwestern city of Aleppo, where rebel groups launched a surprise offensive on government-held positions for the first time in years.
The military said on Saturday that dozens of its soldiers had been killed or wounded in fierce battles with “armed terrorist organisations” in the governorates of Aleppo and Idlib over the previous few days and that it was now regrouping, redeploying troops to strengthen its defence lines as it prepared a “counterattack”.
It said that rebel groups had launched “a broad attack from multiple axes on the Aleppo and Idlib fronts”, reporting clashes “over a strip exceeding 100km (60 miles)”.
The army said the rebels had entered large parts of Aleppo but army bombardment had stopped them from establishing fixed positions. It promised to “expel them and restore the control of the state … over the entire city and its countryside”.
The statement marked the military’s first public acknowledgement that opposition fighters led by the Hay’et Tahrir al-Shams (HTS) group had entered “large parts of neighbourhoods” of Aleppo in the lightning attack that began earlier this week.
Aleppo had been under full state control since government forces backed by Russia and Iran drove out rebels eight years ago.
On Friday, Syrian state television said Russia was providing Syria’s military with air support.
The Syrian Civil Defence, a rescue service operating in opposition-held parts of Syria, said in a post on X that Syrian government and Russian aircraft carried out air attacks on residential neighbourhoods, a gas station and a school in rebel-held Idlib, killing four civilians and wounding six others.
On Saturday, a witness in Aleppo told Al Jazeera that rebel fighters were “combing” the city in search of soldiers.
“Last night they had some prisoners of war, regime soldiers, but they took very good care of them and moved them out immediately so they wouldn’t be in any danger,” the witness said.
The advance by HTS-led fighters opened the way for some long-displaced civilians to return to their homes.
The rebel assault is the most intense fighting seen in northwestern Syria since 2020, when Russia and Turkiye agreed to a deal to de-escalate the conflict after government forces seized areas previously controlled by opposition fighters.
Turkiye has backed an array of opposition forces and established military presence in parts of northwestern Syria. Meanwhile, the United States has supported Syrian Kurdish forces battling ISIL [ISIS] fighters largely in the east of the country.
Syrian authorities closed Aleppo airport and cancelled all flights on Saturday, according to three military sources cited by the Reuters news agency.
The rebels also captured the Abu al-Duhur airbase in the Idlib governorate, which Al Jazeera’s Resul Serdar said was “symbolically … extremely important”.
Serdar said that the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad was caught off guard by the swift rebel operation, attributing their rapid advance to Syrian-government allies Hezbollah and Iran being distracted by the conflicts in Gaza and Lebanon.
“Now the question is: will the regime or Russia or Iran let HTS have full control of the second-largest city in Syria, or are they going to hit back?” asked Serdar.
While there are still skirmishes in southern Aleppo, the central and northwestern parts of the city are now fully under their control, said Serdar.
“That this happened in just four days is unbelievable.”
HTS has become the strongest opposition group in northwestern Syria, controlling much of Idlib province near the Turkish border.
It is considered a “terrorist” organisation by Syria, the US and Russia.
Formerly known as al-Nusra Front, the Syrian branch of al-Qaida, HTS later changed its name several times and distanced itself from al-Qaida.
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