Syrian jihadists have cut off the road between Damascus and Aleppo during an offensive that has killed around 200 people, including civilians killed in Russian airstrikes, according to observers.
On Wednesday, the jihadist group Hayat Tahrir Al Sham (HTS) along with allied factions suddenly attacked government-held areas in the northern province of Aleppo, sparking the fiercest clashes in recent years, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, the Guardian reports.
The number of casualties in the clashes "rose to 182, including 102 fighters from HTS, 19 from allied factions and 61 members of regime forces and their allies," the observatory said.
Rami Abdulrahman, director of the observatory, said that Russian airstrikes in rural parts of Aleppo killed 19 civilians on Thursday, while one civilian was killed in Syrian army shelling a day earlier.
Russia, a close ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, became involved in the Syrian civil war in 2015, turning the tide of the conflict in favor of Assad, whose forces then controlled only a fifth of the country.
The UK-based Observatory said that on Thursday, HTS and its allies, including Turkish-backed factions, "cut the M5 international highway between Damascus and Aleppo ... and took control of the intersection between the M4 and M5 highways."
"The highway is now out of service, after regime forces reopened it several years ago," said the observatory, which has a network of sources inside Syria.
The intersection of the M5 and M4 highways connects the capital Damascus and the coastal regime stronghold of Latakia with the second largest city, Aleppo.
Syria has been affected by civil war for more than a decade, although the intensity of the conflict has decreased in recent years.
Clashes are taking place in the area connecting the provinces of Idlib and Aleppo, including places less than 10 kilometers southwest of Aleppo.
Mohamed Bashir, the leader of the so-called the "salvation government" of HTS, stated at a press conference that "this operation aims to defend the front lines from the fire of the criminal enemy".
Nick Heras, an analyst at the New Lines Institute for Strategy and Policy, told the Guardian that the rebels were trying to "prevent a possible military campaign by the Syrian army in the Aleppo region, which Russian and Syrian airstrikes on rebel areas are already preparing".
Given that Turkey-backed factions are joining the offensive, Heras assessed that Ankara is sending a message to Damascus and Moscow to abandon military operations in northwestern Syria.
In addition to Russia, Assad has the support of Iran and allied militant groups, including Lebanon's Hezbollah.
An Iranian Revolutionary Guard general was killed in Syria on Thursday during fighting between regime forces and jihadists, the Iranian news agency reported.
During the two-month war with Hezbollah in Lebanon, Israel intensified attacks on Iran-backed groups in Syria, including Hezbollah.
Heras said rebel forces "are in a better position to capture villages than Russian-backed regime forces, while the Iranians are focused on Lebanon."
Syrian jihadists and their allies launched the attack on the same day that a ceasefire between Lebanon and Israel took effect. Analyst Haid Haid believes that the rebels "planned this offensive for a long time". He added that "if the rebels had waited too long, the regime could have strengthened its front lines because Hezbollah is no longer busy with the war in Lebanon."
HTS, which is led by Al Qaeda's former Syrian branch, controls most of the northwestern Idlib region, as well as smaller parts of the neighboring provinces of Aleppo, Hama and Latakia.
Syria's civil war began in 2011 after Assad violently suppressed anti-government protests, which turned into a complex conflict that drew in foreign armies and jihadists. More than 500.000 people died in it, millions were displaced, and the country's infrastructure and industry were destroyed.
The Idlib region is subject to a ceasefire - often broken but mostly respected - agreed in 2020 by Turkey and Russia following a Syrian government offensive.
Analysts interviewed by CNN point out that the rebels are using the vacuum created by the weakening of Hezbollah to advance in Syria.
"The rebels see an opportunity to test the front lines with Hezbollah weakened, Iran under pressure and Russia preoccupied with Ukraine ... The rebels have been surprised by their success and have made more progress than they originally planned," said Nanar Havac, a senior analyst focused on Syria at International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based think tank.
"The rebels see a shift in the balance of power," she added.
Iran and Russia have been providing manpower and weapons to help Assad stay in power for more than a decade. Turkey under the leadership of Recep Tayyip Erdogan supports rebel groups and has deployed its forces to maintain control of rebel strongholds in northern Syria.
Iran maintains a military presence in Syria as part of a broader strategy to keep Assad in power and protect its strategic interests in the region. Its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has been targeted by Israel in recent years, including an airstrike on the Iranian embassy in Damascus in April that killed a senior IRGC commander. This event led to the first direct Iranian attack on Israel.
Hezbollah, Iran's ally, played a key role in helping Assad regain lost territory. Its fighters fought on behalf of Assad against Syrian armed opposition groups and the al-Qaeda-linked Nusra faction. Syria also served as a major logistical base for the organization, allowing Hezbollah to build an arsenal of missiles in its home country of Lebanon.
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