BEIRUT: With the fall of the Daesh group’s last significant stronghold in Syria, Iranian and Russian-backed Syrian troops now turn to face off with their main rival, the US-backed forces holding large oil fields and strategic territory in the country’s north and east.
The complicated map puts US and Iranian forces at close proximity, just across the Euphrates River from each other, amid multiple hotspots that could turn violent, particularly in the absence of a clear American policy.
There are already signs.
Iran threatened last week that Syrian troops will advance toward Raqqa, the former Daesh capital, which fell to the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces in October, raising the potential for a clash there. The Kurdish-led SDF also controls some of Syria’s largest oil fields, in the oil-rich eastern Deir Ezzor province, an essential resource that the Syrian government also says it will take back.
The question now is whether the United States is willing to confront the troops of Syrian President Bashar Assad and Iranian-backed militiamen. The Kurds are seeking a clear American commitment to help them defend their gains. American officials have said little of their plans and objectives in Syria beyond general statements about continuing to deny Daesh safe havens and continuing to train and equip allies.
Washington seems to be hoping to negotiate a deal for Syria that would protect the Kurds’ ambitions for autonomy while limiting Iran’s ambitions for a presence in Syria. Four US officials said Presidents Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin could announce a Russian-US deal on how they hope to Syria’s war after Daesh’s defeat if they meet Friday at a conference in Vietnam. However, prospect of such a meeting uncertain, it was not clear if such a deal had been reached.
But Assad underlined that his government plans to regain all of Syria and will now fight against plans to “partition” Syria, a reference to Kurdish aspirations for a recognized autonomous zone in the north.
Government victories “have foiled all partition plans and the goals of terrorism and the countries sponsoring it,” Assad said during a meeting this week with Ali Akbar Velayati, the adviser of Iran’s supreme leader.
With its collapse in Boukamal on Thursday, the Daesh group has no major territory left in Syria or Iraq. Its militants are believed to have pulled back into the desert, east and west of the Euphrates River. The group has a small presence near the capital, Damascus. Late Thursday, the extremist group carried out a counteroffensive in Boukamal, regaining control of more than 40 percent of the border town.
The Euphrates now stands as the dividing line between Syrian government troops and the SDF in much of Deir Ezzor province.
Government forces and their allies, including Iranian troops and fighters from the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, control the western bank. They hold the provincial capital and several small oil fields.
The Kurdish-led force, along with American troops advising them, is on the eastern bank. They hold two of Syria’s largest oil fields, nearly a dozen smaller ones, one of the largest gas fields and large parts of the border with Iraq. They say they are determined to keep the government from crossing the river.
The coalition had said for weeks that the SDF was pushing toward Boukamal. With Assad’s forces taking the town, the coalition said in a statement to the AP on Friday that the SDF is now moving on Baghuz, a village also on the border near Boukamal but on the eastern bank of the Euphrates.
Iran’s Velayati said the US presence aims to divide Syria. “They have not and will not succeed in Iraq and they will also not succeed in Syria,” he said during a visit to Lebanon last weekend. “We will soon see the Syrian government and popular forces in Syria east of the Euphrates and they will liberate the city of Raqqa.”
The US coalition declined to comment on Velayati’s remarks, saying “it would not be appropriate to comment on speculation or rumor by any third party.”
Washington has been wary of Iran’s increasing influence in the area and its attempts to establish a land corridor from Iran across Iraq and Syria to Lebanon.
Defense Secretary Jim Mattis acknowledged this week that allies have pressed for a clearer US policy in Syria. The priority was to get the UN-sponsored peace talks back on track, he said, offering few details.
“We’re trying to get this into the diplomatic mode so we can get things sorted out ... and make certain (that) minorities — whoever they are — are not just subject to more of what we’ve seen” under Assad, he said, apparently referring to ensuring some sort of accommodation to Kurdish ambitions.
The talks, scheduled for Nov. 28, have already been challenged by Russia, which seeks a bigger role. Moscow called for intra-Syrian talks to chart a political process and invited the dominant Kurdish party that forms the backbone of the SDF, the first such international invitation. A date for the Russia talks has not been set.
Yezid Sayigh, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut, predicted the Syrian government will use military pressure to reach a negotiated solution with the Kurds amid lack of evidence that the US has any “commitment to engineering political change in Syria or indeed has a Syria policy at all.” In an article last week in the Al-Hayat newspaper, Sayigh said Russia is the likely arbiter between Kurds and the government.
Ilham Ahmed, a senior politician with the political arm of the SDF, said indirect talks with the government have taken place but there are no signs of a change in their position.
“A clear position from the coalition can prevent confrontation,” she said.
Meanwhile, the Kurdish-led SDF faces the complications of trying to run Arab-dominated areas. With US-backing, the force sought to allay any Arab residents’ fears of Kurdish domination by forming joint local councils and electing Arab and Kurdish officials.
But this week, the SDF-held town of Manbij saw protests by Arab residents against compulsory military conscription imposed by the SDF. Hundreds were briefly detained, according to Mohammed Khaled, with activist-operated Aleppo 24.
Ahmed described the protests as “fabricated” by the government and Turkey, which sees Kurdish aspirations as a threat.
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Associated Press writers Josh Lederman and Matthew Lee in Washington contributed to this report.
After Daesh collapse, Syria government faces US-backed Kurds
After Daesh collapse, Syria government faces US-backed Kurds
Turkish-backed Syrian militants blocked Kurdish plan, Turkish security sources say
- Militants blocked an attempt by Kurdish groups to establish a corridor connecting Tel Rifaat to northeastern Syria
ANKARA: Turkiye-backed Syrian militants who are fighting Syrian President Bashar Assad have blocked an attempt by Kurdish groups to establish a corridor connecting Tel Rifaat to northeastern Syria, Turkish security sources said on Sunday.
Turkiye refers to this group of rebels as Syrian National Army.
The sources said that Kurdish groups, including the PKK and YPG, had sought to take advantage of Syrian government forces withdrawing from parts of the country under the control of Assad’s forces.
The corridor would have linked the Kurdish-held northeastern regions to Tel Rifaat, a strategic area northwest of Aleppo.
Iran says to ‘firmly support’ Damascus after militant attacks
- Iran’s top diplomat Abbas Araghchi will leave Tehran for Damascus on Sunday
Tehran: Iran’s top diplomat Abbas Araghchi said Sunday he will leave Tehran for Damascus to deliver a message of support for Syria’s government and armed forces, state media said, after a lighting advance by rebels.
Tehran has been a staunch ally of Syrian President Bashar Assad during the civil war that broke out in 2011. Iran maintains it does not have combat troops in Syria, only officers who provide military advice and training.
Iran-backed Hezbollah, of Lebanon, has for years fought on the side of the Syrian government.
“I am going to Damascus to convey the message of the Islamic Republic to the Syrian government,” Araghchi said, emphasising Tehran will “firmly support the Syrian government and army,” the IRNA state news agency reported.
Islamist-led rebels on Saturday seized Aleppo’s airport and dozens of nearby towns after overrunning most of Syria’s second city Aleppo, a war monitor said.
Syria’s army confirmed that the rebels had entered “large parts” of the city of around two million people and said “dozens of men from our armed forces were killed.”
Araghchi again called the surprise rebel offensive a plot by the United States and Israel.
“The Syrian army will once again win over these terrorist groups as in the past,” the foreign minister added.
An Iranian news agency reported earlier that a general in Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps was killed in Syria on Thursday during the fighting.
On Saturday, Iran’s foreign ministry said its consulate in Aleppo had come under attack, but staff members were safe.
Foreign ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei said Araghchi who will visit Ankara for consultations with Turkish officials after his stop in Damascus.
Since 2020, the rebel enclave in Syria’s northwestern Idlib region has been subject to a Turkish- and Russian-brokered truce that had largely been holding despite repeated violations.
But the insurgents’ launch on Wednesday of a surprise offensive against the city of Aleppo shattered the truce, the same day a fragile ceasefire took effect in neighboring Lebanon between Israel and Hezbollah.
The Syrian government had regained control of a large part of the country in 2015 with the support of its Russian and Iranian allies, and in 2016 the entire city of Aleppo.
Israeli strikes kill 15 in Gaza, Cairo holds fresh talks with Hamas
- The strike in the Muwasi area is a sprawling tent camp housing hundreds of thousands of displaced people
- Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed over 44,000 Palestinians, more than half of them women and children
CAIRO: Israeli military strikes killed at least 15 Palestinians in Gaza on Sunday, medics said, as Israeli forces kept up bombardments across the enclave and blew up houses on its northern edge.
In the central Gaza camp of Nuseirat, an Israeli airstrike killed six people in a house, and another attack killed three in a home in Gaza City, medics said.
Two children were killed when a missile hit a tent encampment in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, while four other people were killed in an airstrike in Rafah, near the border with Egypt, medics told Reuters.
Residents said the military blew up clusters of houses in the northern Gaza areas of Jabalia, Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun, where Israeli forces have operated since October this year.
Palestinians say Israel’s operations on the northern edge of the enclave are part of a plan to clear people out through forced evacuations and bombardments to create a buffer zone — an allegation the army denies.
The military says it has killed hundreds of Hamas militants there as it fights to stop the faction regrouping almost 14 months since the war in Gaza started. Hamas’s armed wing says it has killed many Israeli forces in anti-tank rocket and mortar fire attacks, and in ambushes with explosive devices since the new operation started.
Prisoners, Talks
Two Palestinian detainees from Gaza have died in Israeli custody, prisoner advocacy groups said on Sunday, bringing the number of detainees reported killed since the start of the war to 47.
They named the two men as Mohammad Idris and Muath Rayyan, both in their 30s.
The Israel Prison Service said the cases were not under its jurisdiction and there was no immediate comment from the military which runs detention camps.
Israel has denied accusations from Palestinian and international human rights organizations that detainees have been mistreated and tortured in its jails and detention camps.
Meanwhile, Hamas leaders held talks in Cairo with Egyptian security officials to explore ways to reach a deal with Israel that could secure the release of hostages in return for Palestinian prisoners.
The visit was the first since the United States announced on Wednesday it would revive efforts in collaboration with Qatar, Egypt and Turkiye to negotiate a ceasefire in Gaza.
Hamas is seeking an agreement that would end the war while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said the war will only end when Hamas is eradicated.
Israel’s military campaign in Gaza has killed more than 44,300 people and displaced nearly all of the enclave’s population, Gaza officials say. Vast swathes of Gaza lie in ruins.
The conflict when Hamas-led militants attacked southern Israeli communities on Oct. 7, 2023, killing about 1,200 people and abducting more than 250 hostages, according to Israeli officials.
Syrian militants expand offensive after taking Aleppo
- Thousands of fighters move to nearby province, facing almost no defense from government forces
- Syria’s President Bashar Assad says will defeat militants no matter how much their attacks intensify
BEIRUT: Thousands of Syrian militants took over most of Aleppo on Saturday, establishing positions in the country’s largest city and controlling its airport before expanding their shock offensive to a nearby province. They faced little to no resistance from government troops, according to fighters and activists.
A war monitor, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said the insurgents led by Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham seized control of Aleppo International airport, the first international airport to be controlled by insurgents. The fighters claimed they seized the airport and posted pictures from there.
Thousands of fighters also moved on, facing almost no opposition from government forces, to seize towns and villages in northern Hama, a province where they had a presence before being expelled by government troops in 2016. They claimed Saturday evening to have entered the city of Hama.
A huge embarrassment for Assad
The swift and surprise offensive is a huge embarrassment for Syria’s President Bashar Assad and raises questions about his armed forces’ preparedness. The insurgent offensive launched from their stronghold in the country’s northwest appeared to have been planned for years. It also comes at a time when Assad’s allies were preoccupied with their own conflicts.
In his first public comments since the start of the offensive, released by the state news agency Saturday evening, Assad said Syria will continue to “defend its stability and territorial integrity against terrorists and their supporters.” He added that Syria is able to defeat them no matter how much their attacks intensify.
Turkiye, a main backer of Syrian opposition groups, said its diplomatic efforts had failed to stop government attacks on opposition-held areas in recent weeks, which were in violation of a de-escalation agreement sponsored by Russia, Iran and Ankara. Turkish security officials said a limited offensive by the militants was planned to stop government attacks and allow civilians to return, but the offensive expanded as Syrian government forces began to retreat from their positions.
The insurgents, led by the Salafi militant group Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham and including Turkiye-backed fighters, launched their shock offensive on Wednesday. They first staged a two-pronged attack in Aleppo and the Idlib countryside, entering Aleppo two days later and securing a strategic town that lies on the highway that links Syria’s largest city to the capital and the coast.
By Saturday evening, they seized at least four towns in the central Hama province and claimed to have entered the provincial capital. The insurgents staged an attempt to reclaim areas they controlled in Hama in 2017 but failed.
Preparing a counterattack
Syria’s armed forces said in a statement Saturday that to absorb the large attack on Aleppo and save lives, it redeployed troops and equipment and was preparing a counterattack. The statement acknowledged that insurgents entered large parts of the city but said they have not established bases or checkpoints. Later on Saturday, the armed forces sought to dispel what it said were lies in reference to reports about its forces retreating or defecting, saying the general command was carrying out its duties in “combatting terrorist organizations.”
The return of the insurgents to Aleppo was their first since 2016, following a grueling military campaign in which Assad’s forces were backed by Russia, Iran and its allied groups.
The 2016 battle for Aleppo was a turning point in the war between Syrian government forces and militant fighters after 2011 protests against Assad’s rule turned into an all-out war. After appearing to be losing control of the country to the militants, the Aleppo battle secured Assad’s hold on strategic areas of Syria, with opposition factions and their foreign backers controlling areas on the periphery.
The lightning offensive threatened to reignite the country’s civil war, which had been largely in a stalemate for years.
Late on Friday, witnesses said two airstrikes hit the edge of Aleppo city, targeting insurgent reinforcements and falling near residential areas. The Observatory said 20 fighters were killed.
Insurgents were filmed outside police headquarters, in the city center, and outside the Aleppo citadel, the medieval palace in the old city center, and one of the largest in the world. They tore down posters of Assad, stepping on some and burning others.
The push into Aleppo followed weeks of simmering low-level violence, including government attacks on opposition-held areas.
The offensive came as Iran-linked groups, primarily Lebanon’s Hezbollah, which has backed Syrian government forces since 2015, have been preoccupied with their own battles at home. A ceasefire in Hezbollah’s two-month war with Israel took effect Wednesday, the same day that Syrian opposition factions announced their offensive. Israel has also escalated its attacks against Hezbollah and Iran-linked targets in Syria during the last 70 days.
Insurgents raise flags over the Aleppo citadel
Speaking from the heart of the city in Saadallah Aljabri square, opposition fighter Mohammad Al-Abdo said it was his first time back in Aleppo in 13 years, when his older brother was killed at the start of the war.
“God willing, the rest of Aleppo province will be liberated” from government forces, he said.
There was light traffic in the city center on Saturday. Opposition fighters fired in the air in celebration but there was no sign of clashes or government troops present.
Journalists in the city filmed soldiers captured by the insurgents and the bodies of others killed in battle.
Abdulkafi Alhamdo, a teacher who fled Aleppo in 2016 and returned Friday night after hearing the insurgents were inside, described “mixed feelings of pain, sadness and old memories.”
“As I entered Aleppo, I kept telling myself this is impossible. How did this happen?”
Alhamdo said he strolled through the city at night visiting the Aleppo citadel, where the insurgents raised their flags, a major square and the university of Aleppo, as well as the last spot he was in before he was forced to leave for the countryside.
“I walked in (the empty) streets of Aleppo, shouting, ‘People, people of Aleppo. We are your sons,’” he told The Associated Press in a series of messages.
City’s hospitals are full
Aleppo residents reported hearing clashes and gunfire but most stayed indoors. Some fled the fighting.
Schools and government offices were closed Saturday as most people stayed indoors, according to Sham FM radio, a pro-government station. Bakeries were open. Witnesses said the insurgents deployed security forces around the city to prevent any acts of violence or looting.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said Friday Aleppo’s two key public hospitals were reportedly full of patients while many private facilities closed.
In social media posts, the insurgents were pictured outside of the citadel, the medieval palace in the old city center, and one of the largest in the world. In cellphone videos, they recorded themselves having conversations with residents they visited at home, seeking to reassure them they will cause no harm.
The Syrian Kurdish-led administration in the country’s east said nearly 3,000 people, most of them students, had arrived in their region after fleeing the fighting in Aleppo, which has a sizeable Kurdish population.
State media reported that a number of “terrorists,” including sleeper cells, infiltrated parts of the city. Government troops chased them and arrested a number who posed for pictures near city landmarks, they said.
On a state TV morning show Saturday, commentators said army reinforcements and Russia’s assistance would repel the “terrorist groups,” blaming Turkiye for supporting the insurgents’ push into Aleppo and Idlib provinces.
Russia’s state news agency Tass quoted Oleg Ignasyuk, a Russian Defense Ministry official coordinating in Syria, as saying that Russian warplanes targeted and killed 200 militants who had launched the offensive in the northwest on Friday. It provided no further details.
Israel says it struck Hezbollah weapons smuggling sites in Syria, testing a fragile ceasefire
- Days-old ceasefire halted months of fighting between both sides but has seen sporadic fire
- Israel says it reserves the right under the ceasefire to strike against any perceived violations
TEL AVIV: Israeli aircraft struck Hezbollah weapons smuggling sites along Syria’s border with Lebanon, the Israeli military said Saturday, testing a fragile, days-old ceasefire that halted months of fighting between the sides but has seen continued sporadic fire.
The military said it struck sites that had been used to smuggle weapons from Syria to Lebanon after the ceasefire took effect, which the military said was a violation of its terms. There was no immediate comment from Syrian authorities or activists monitoring the conflict in that country. Hezbollah also did not immediately comment.
The Israeli strike, the latest of several since the ceasefire began on Wednesday, came as unrest spread to other areas of the Middle East, with Syrian insurgents breaching the country’s largest city, Aleppo, in a shock offensive that added fresh uncertainty to a region reeling from multiple wars.
The truce between Israel and the Iran-backed Hezbollah, brokered by the United States and France, calls for an initial two-month ceasefire in which the militants are to withdraw north of Lebanon’s Litani River and Israeli forces are to return to their side of the border.
The repeated bursts of violence — with no reports of serious casualties — reflected the uneasy nature of the ceasefire that otherwise appeared to hold. While Israel has accused Hezbollah of violating the ceasefire, Lebanon has also accused Israel of the same in the days since it took effect.
Many Lebanese, some of the 1.2 million displaced in the conflict, were streaming south to their homes, despite warnings by the Israeli and Lebanese militaries to stay away from certain areas.
Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency reported that an Israeli drone attacked a car in the southern village of Majdal Zoun. The agency said there had been casualties but gave no further details. Majdal Zoun, near the Mediterranean Sea, is close to where Israeli troops still have a presence.
The military said earlier Saturday that its forces, who remain in southern Lebanon until they withdraw gradually over the 60-day period, had been operating to distance “suspects” in the region, without elaborating, and said troops had located and seized weapons found hidden in a mosque.
Israel says it reserves the right under the ceasefire to strike against any perceived violations. Israel has made returning the tens of thousands of displaced Israelis home the goal of the war with Hezbollah but Israelis, concerned Hezbollah was not deterred and could still attack northern communities, have been apprehensive about returning home.
Hezbollah began attacking Israel on Oct. 8, 2023, in solidarity with the Palestinian militant group Hamas and its assault on southern Israel the day before. Israel and Hezbollah kept up a low-level conflict of cross-border fire for nearly a year, until Israel escalated its fight with a sophisticated attack that detonated hundreds of pagers and walkie-talkies used by Hezbollah fighters. It followed that up with an intense aerial bombardment campaign against Hezbollah assets, killing many of its top leaders including longtime chief Hassan Nasrallah, and it launched a ground invasion in early October.
More than 3,760 people have been killed by Israeli fire in Lebanon during the conflict, many of them civilians, according to Lebanese health officials. The fighting killed more than 70 people in Israel — over half of them civilians — as well as dozens of Israeli soldiers fighting in southern Lebanon.
