AMMAN: To assist Damascus in retaking Aleppo from anti-government militants who took control of the city last week, hundreds of Iraqi militia members entered Syria on Sunday night.
According to two Iraqi security officials, more than 300 fighters, mostly from the Badr and Nujabaa groups, crossed the border late on Sunday using a muddy road instead of the official one.
According to a senior Syrian military source, the fighters had crossed in small groups to avoid airstrikes. “These are new reinforcements being sent to help our comrades on the front lines in the north,” the source added.
Speaking about the local militia organizations Tehran supports, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi stated on Monday that while Syria’s military was capable of facing its adversaries, “resistance groups will help and Iran will provide any support needed.”
Russian aircraft bomb anti-Damascus fighter positions
Russian and Syrian military aircraft stepped up their operations on Monday in areas controlled by members of the Hayat Tahrir Al Sham (HTS) organization in the northwest, including a raid on a camp for displaced people that killed seven people.
Many people in the area were unprepared for HTS’s lightning strike last Thursday, which dealt President Assad his worst blow in years and rekindled a fight that had seemed to be at a standstill for years when civil war front lines stabilized in 2020. Russia still maintains an air station in northern Syria, despite its attention being drawn to the conflict in Ukraine since 2022.
Assad’s “offer” from the US
According to people acquainted with the situation, the United States and the United Arab Emirates have talked about trying to entice Bashar Al Assad to break with Iran by promising to remove sanctions if he shuts down “weapons routes to Hezbollah” in Lebanon.
According to the sources, the talks happened before to last week’s HTS march on Aleppo.
A uprising against Assad’s authority sparked the Syrian War in 2011, and the HTS and its allies controlled a large portion of Aleppo from 2012 until 2016, when Syrian troops retook it with assistance from militias backed by Russia and Iran. This was a significant turning point in the war.
With millions of Syrians already displaced and conflicting factions in the region supported by regional and international powers, any further escalation in Syria runs the risk of further destabilizing an already unstable region already riven by the wars in Gaza and Lebanon.
Both mainstream organizations supported by Turkey and Hayat Tahrir Al Sham, a former Al Qaeda member, are part of the anti-Assad forces. Along its border, Turkey maintains a military presence in a portion of Syria.
Northeastern land is held by Kurdish-led forces that Ankara labels terrorists but that, with US assistance, fought the extremist Islamic State organization.
During their Monday meeting, the foreign ministers of Iran and Turkey talked about the conflict in Syria. Turkish outside Minister Hakan Fidan urged the Syrian opposition to reach a compromise, stating that outside interference could not account for the HTS advancements.
Airstrikes
According to Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov, Russia, whose 2015 intervention in the fight tipped the military scales in favor of Assad, is still backing the Syrian president and is keeping an eye on the situation on the ground. According to Russian war bloggers, Moscow fired the general commanding its troops in Syria on Sunday.
Syrian and Russian air forces were hitting anti-government fighter camps in the countryside east of Aleppo city, Damascus said.
Seven people, including five children, were killed when jets struck residential parts of Aleppo city and a camp for displaced people in Idlib province, according to the White Helmets rescue organization and inhabitants of rebel-held areas in the north.
Along the front line north of Hama, a city that sits between Aleppo and the capital Damascus, the government said the military was attempting to secure a series of towns that it retook on Sunday.
In Turkiye, Syrian opposition leader Hadi Al Bahra said the HTS and its allies were trying to force the Syrian government to accept a political transition. “We are ready to start negotiating tomorrow,” Bahra told a press conference.
