An observer of the war in Syria said on Saturday that jihadist militants now control most of the city of Aleppo, reporting Russian airstrikes on parts of Syria’s second city for the first time since 2016.
The militants have been waging a lightning offensive against Syrian government forces since Wednesday, the same day that a fragile truce between Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah, a Damascus ally, took effect in neighbouring Lebanon after two months of all-out warfare.
The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said:
“Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and allied groups … have taken control of most of the city, government centres and prisons.”
HTS, a jihadist alliance led by a former Syrian al-Qaeda affiliate, controls much of the Idlib region in northwestern Syria, as well as the neighbouring provinces of Aleppo, Hama and Latakia.
Overnight, Russian “warplanes raided areas of Aleppo city for the first time since 2016,” added the UK-based Observatory, which relies on a network of sources inside Syria.
Footage of Russian air strikes on a crowd of Syrian militants appeared on social media on Saturday, with footage of the attack captured on video. The video shows the moment a shell hit military personnel standing near cars.
Earlier it became known that the Russian Armed Forces during the day destroyed at least 200 militants of the group Jebhat al-Nusra and other groups that went on the offensive in the Syrian provinces of Aleppo and Idlib.
