Summary of the day
Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi traveled to the Syrian capital Damascus, where he told reporters in Iran the purpose of his visit was to convey the strength of Tehran’s backing for Bashar al-Assad and his rule.
Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, whose regime is also backed by Moscow, has vowed to “defend [Syria’s] stability and territorial integrity in the face of all terrorists and their backers”.
Britain blamed President Bashar al-Assad for the “escalation” in the Syrian civil war that has seen the city of Aleppo fall to rebel forces.
Turkey’s top diplomat discussed the shock rebel offensive in Syria with US secretary of state Antony Blinken, saying Ankara would support moves “to reduce tension” in the war-torn country. In a phone call, foreign minister Hakan Fidan told Blinken that Turkey was “against any development that would increase instability in the region and we support moves to reduce the tension in Syria”.
At least 372 people have been killed, including at least 20 civilians, since Syrian rebels launched a surprise offensive against Assad on Wednesday, according to the UK-based war monitor, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. It said Russian airstrikes killed eight civilians on Sunday in the Idlib province of northwestern Syria, a rebel stronghold. Russia has carried out a wave of airstrikes in Syria today – including in rural parts of Hama, and Idlib – as rebel forces continue to push south.
The rebels, led by Islamist militant group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which was set up in 2011 as a direct affiliate of al-Qaida, have taken control of Aleppo, Syria’s second largest city. Sources told Reuters that they had also captured sheikh Najjar estate, one of the country’s major industrial zones. On Sunday, the Syrian army said it had recaptured several towns that had been overrun in recent days by rebels.
Away from Syria, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees said it is halting aid deliveries through the main cargo crossing into the war-ravaged Gaza Strip because of the threat of armed gangs who have looted recent convoys. It blamed the breakdown of law and order in large part on Israeli policies.
A former Israeli defence minister has accused Israel of committing war crimes and ethnic cleansing in the Gaza Strip.
Rebels behind Aleppo’s surprise fall took advantage of Russian and Iranian distraction
It was not Kyiv that fell in three days, but Aleppo. A surprise offensive launched by Syrian rebels from the north west of the country last week has reignited a dormant conflict – and revealed a change in the balance of power caused not by one but two nearby wars, in Ukraine and Lebanon and the Middle East.
Aleppo was the scene of fierce and destructive fighting between 2012 and 2016 when the Syrian civil war was at its height. Rebel groups were forced out as Syrian government forces supporting the president, Bashar al-Assad, were able to capture the country’s second city, with the help of Russia and its air force.
The Idlib region of Syria in the north-west, with a population of around 5 million, remained outside Assad’s grip, however. An intervention by Turkey in 2020, propped up the position of Hei’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a jihadist Sunni group that broke from al-Qaeda from 2016, but remains proscribed by the UK and other western countries.
A ceasefire had remained in place since March 2020, but Assad’s backers have been weakened, and with it the Syrian regime. An attack that began on Wednesday forced a hurried retreat by government forces and by Saturday the city appeared to be in rebel hands, a reminder of the elementary military effectiveness of surprise.
The question is why were Assad’s forces so suddenly vulnerable, when four years ago they appeared close to crushing HTS in Idlib. Answers are not difficult to find. Russia is not the force it was in Syria in the last decade, because Moscow has shifted its military focus and resources to its invasion of Ukraine.
As the Institute of the Study of War noted on Saturday, S-300 missile systems were withdrawn from Syria for the war in Ukraine in 2022 and Russia’s presence generally down-weighted. Moscow’s ability to provide sustained support for Assad will inevitably be constrained in the longer term.
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