Death toll in Syrian insurgency rises to 200 as jihadist fighters cut off key roads between Damascus & Aleppo

As the insurgent fighters stormed into Syria, they cut off a road between Damascus and Aleppo in an offensive that killed around 200 people. On Wednesday, the jihadist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and allied factions launched a surprise attack on government-held areas of northern Aleppo province. This triggered the fiercest clashes Syria saw in years.

According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the toll in the ongoing battle rose to 182, which includes 102 fighters from the HTS and 19 from the allied forces. Meanwhile, 61 soldiers working for the Syrian regime died in the attacks. Amid the chaos, Rami Abdulrahman, who heads the observatory, noted that Russian airstrikes on the Aleppo countryside killed 19 civilians on Thursday, and another civilian had been killed in Syrian army shelling a day earlier.

It is pertinent to note that Russia is a close ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. It was also the first country to intervene when the Syrian civil war broke out in 2015, helping the president establish his control over a fifth of the country.

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Insurgent forces cut crucial roads

According to the Syrian Observatory, the HTS and its allied factions, including groups backed by neighbouring Turkey, “cut off the Damascus-Aleppo international M5 highway … in addition to controlling the junction between the M4 and M5 highways.”

“The highway has now been put out of service after it was reopened by regime forces years ago,” said the monitor, which has a network of sources inside Syria. It is important to note that the junction of the M5 and M4 highways connects the capital and the regime’s coastal stronghold Latakia with the second city of Aleppo.

The clashes erupted in the area straddling Idlib and Aleppo provinces, some of them less than 6 miles (10km) southwest of the outskirts of Aleppo city. “This operation aims to repel the sources of fire of the criminal enemy from the frontlines,” said Mohamed Bashir, who heads HTS’s so-called “salvation government,” AFP reported.

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Meanwhile, during the Thursday fighting, a general from Iran’s Revolutionary Guards was killed in Syria. Iran has been an ardent supporter of Assad as well. Interestingly, the Syrian jihadists and their allies launched their attack the day the Lebanon-Israel truce came into effect.

According to AFP, HTS is led by al-Qaeda’s former Syria branch and controls swathes of the northwest Idlib area as well as small parts of neighbouring Aleppo, Hama, and Latakia provinces. The tussle between the Syrian regime and the jihadist fighters has been ongoing since Assad crushed anti-government protests in 2011.

The animosities between the two factions eventually drew in foreign armies and jihadists and killed more than 500,000 people. The region of Idlib is subject to a ceasefire, which has been repeatedly violated but has largely been held. Turkey and Russia brokered the ceasefire deal in question after a Syrian government offensive in March 2020.

With inputs from agencies.