The rebels who have swept through Syria are led by Islamist alliance Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS, along with an umbrella group of Turkish-backed Syrian militias called the Syrian National Army.
Both have been entrenched in the north-west. They launched the shock offensive on 27 November with gunmen capturing Aleppo, Syria’s largest city, and the central city of Hama, the fourth largest.
The founder of HTS, Abu Muhammad al-Jolani, was once a participant in the Iraqi insurgency against the US as a member of the group that eventually became Islamic State.
