Islamist insurgents continue to breach the ceasefire in Syria’s civil war by attacking Aleppo, the country’s second largest city, in an effort to reignite a war.
Jihadists launched a surprise offensive attack Wednesday, seizing towns and villages in the northwestern countryside while cutting a key highway reported Yahoo News.
ABC News posted footage from the aftermath of the Aleppo breach on YouTube.
By Friday, they detonated two car bombs said the war monitor, Syrian Observatory for Human Rights per PBS. The violence has killed 242 people in Syria.
According to the Syrian Defense ministry on Facebook, their armed forces were repelling attacks and were able to regain control over some areas. Turkey state-run Anadolu Agency via Spectrum News NY 1, reported that the insurgents now control approximately 70 locations in the Aleppo and Idlib provinces.
The rebels, led by the militant group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS is breaking a ceasefire that was established in 2016. The ceasefire started over a 2011 civil war led by President Bashar al-Assad, after insurgents were driven out of Aleppo, by Syrian troops supported by Russia and Iran.
Opposition forces gained momentum by the diminished strength of Hezbollah, which is backed by Iran, the Associated Press reported. Iran is currently preoccupied in a battle with Israel, where it launched 250 rockets and other projectiles on November 24.
The breaching of Aleppo is another war in the Middle East that’s feeding off of neighboring conflicts. The region is still reeling from the dual wars in Gaza and Lebanon with Israel. Iran continues to support Hamas, which is in conflict with Israel.
Turkey, which has backed Syrian opposition groups such as Hezbollah, did nothing to prevent the government attacks, reported Yahoo News, a move which is seen as a violation of a 2019 agreement sponsored by Russia, Turkey and Iran to freeze the conflict.
The Syrian civil war started in 2011 with a wave of protests against the authoritarian rule of President al-Assad, which led to the quitting of the Baath cabinet. Assad’s government, backed by weapons shipments from Iran and Russia, retaliated through violence against its own citizens and civilians which led to an insurgency. Iran even gave a $4 billion line of credit to Assad to prop up the civil war.
The civil war has created the Syrian refugee crisis, where Syrians attempting to flee a warzone find it difficult to immigrate into Europe and the United States.
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