Rebels in northern Syria are exploiting the Assad regime’s weakness.
With Russia and Iran distracted by regional conflicts, a stagnant 13-year-long civil war in Syria has exploded into renewed violence.
In a lightning offensive launched last week, rebel groups led by the militant Islamist faction Hayat Tahrir al-Sham took the forces of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad by surprise.
They seized control of the city of Aleppo — the first time rebels have controlled the city since 2016 — and pushed further south toward the city of Hama.
It’s the most intense outbreak of fighting in the war since Syrian government forces, backed by Iran and Russia, drove rebels back to their strongholds in the north eight years ago, and a stalemate developed.
Syrian government forces and their Russian allies are battling to hold back the offensive, with Russia launching airstrikes on Aleppo and the western city of Idlib on Sunday as Syrian government forces regroup, according to monitoring group The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
The offensive comes with the powerful allies who’ve helped prop up Assad’s government for years distracted and embroiled in costly wars of their own.
«He [Assad] was able to survive the civil war because of all the assistance he got, and that’s gone», Joshua Landis, head of the Middle East studies program at the University of Oklahoma, told The New York Times.
