By Stefan J. Bos, Chief International Correspondent Worthy News
DAMASCUS/JERUSALEM (Worthy News) – Syrian opposition groups have breached Syria’s second-largest city, Aleppo, after blowing up two car bombs and fighting with government forces on Friday in clashes that have killed some 200 people, a Syria war monitor and witnesses say.
Insurgents have been approaching Aleppo city for days and seized several towns and villages along the way.
The offensive came as Iran-linked groups, who had backed Syrian government forces since 2015, were preoccupied with their battles at home.
The latest fighting marked the first time in years that rebel forces in north-western Syria captured territory from President Bashar al-Assad’s military.
It came shortly after Israel and Iran’s proxy, Hezbollah, agreed on a ceasefire deal that involved withdrawing from territory in southern Lebanon.
Additionally, Russia’s military, which also supports Syria’s government, faces challenges as well because of Moscow’s focus on the war in Ukraine.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a war monitor, said the insurgents blew up two car bombs at the city’s western edge on Friday.
INSURGENT COMMANDER
An insurgent commander urged residents through social media to cooperate with the advancing forces.
The Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and allied factions said they had seized control of several towns and villages in Aleppo and Idlib provinces since Wednesday.
The Syrian military said its forces were confronting a “large-scale” attack by “terrorists” and inflicting heavy losses on them.
More than 180 combatants on both sides had been killed in the fighting, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
Additionally, at least 19 civilians had also been killed in Syrian and Russian air strikes on opposition-held areas, it added.
More than half a million people have been killed in the civil war that erupted after the government cracked down violently on peaceful pro-democracy protests in 2011, according to official estimates.
Among those fleeing are also thousands of Christians, Worthy News established.
REMAINING STRONGHOLD
Idlib, where the current fighting occurs, is the last remaining opposition stronghold and is home to more than 4 million people. Many of these residents have been displaced during the armed conflict and are living in dire conditions, according to aid workers.
HTS mainly controls the enclave, but Turkish-backed rebel factions operating under the banner of the Syrian National Army (SNA) and Turkish forces are also based there.
In 2020, Turkey and Russia – a staunch ally of Assad – brokered a ceasefire to halt a push by the government to retake Idlib.
That led to an extended lull in violence, but sporadic clashes, air strikes, and shelling continued. Turkish media said the insurgents now control about 70 locations in Aleppo and Idlib provinces.
Syria’s state media reported earlier Friday that “projectiles” from insurgents landed in the student accommodations at Aleppo’s university in the city center, killing four people, including two students.
The report said that public transportation to the city had also been diverted from the main highway linking Aleppo to Damascus to avoid clashes. Fighters reportedly also advanced on the town of Saragab, in northwestern Idlib province, a strategic area that would secure supply lines to Aleppo.
This week’s advances were one of the largest by opposition factions and amounted to the most intense fighting in northwestern Syria since 2020, when government forces seized areas previously controlled by opposition fighters.
Copyright 1999-2025 Worthy News. This article was originally published on Worthy News and was reproduced with permission.
More Worthy News
U.S.-based singer and rap star Nicki Minaj brought her global profile to the United Nations on Tuesday to draw attention to the mass killings of Christians in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation, where more than 7,000 Christians were murdered in the first seven months of this year, according to the watchdog group Intersociety.
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) used his first White House visit in seven years to deliver a blunt message: Riyadh is ready to join the Abraham Accords — but only if there is a real, irreversible path toward a two-state solution.
In one of the most lopsided votes in recent congressional history, the House of Representatives voted 427-1 on Tuesday to force the Department of Justice to release all unclassified documents related to the Jeffrey Epstein investigation. The Senate quickly followed suit, passing the measure by unanimous consent, sending the bill to President Donald Trump–who announced this week that he would sign it.
As the United Nations Security Council approved a U.S.-drafted resolution laying out a pathway toward a Palestinian state, new polling shows Israeli public opinion moving sharply in the opposite direction.
Martin Bosma of the anti-Islam Party for Freedom (PVV) has lost his bid for another term as speaker of the Dutch House of Representatives, in a vote signaling shifting parliamentary dynamics after last month’s election.
A visibly angry U.S. President Donald J. Trump said the broadcast license of U.S. broadcaster ABC should be “taken away” after one of its reporters confronted him over his ties to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein — an exchange that played out with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman seated beside him in the Oval Office.
Palestinian attackers killed an Israeli man and wounded three others in a combined ramming-and-stabbing assault in Judea and Samaria (also known as the West Bank) on Tuesday, shortly after the United Nations Security Council endorsed U.S. President Donald J. Trump’s peace initiative for Gaza, Israeli officials said.