Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s staunchest allies, Russia and Iran, pledged unconditional support to his government on Monday, sending warplanes and voicing diplomatic support as his forces attempted to repel a startling rebel advance in his country’s northwest.
Russian and Syrian fighter jets were striking targets across territory seized by rebels in northwestern Syria on Monday, according to Syrian state media and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. The Observatory, a Britain-based war monitor, said the strikes had killed both civilians and fighters.
Yet the rebels appeared to continue their advance through Aleppo, once Syria’s largest city, and the surrounding areas, battling pro-Assad forces to capture more territory in Hama province, in western Syria.
Russian and Iranian officials stood by Mr. al-Assad in a flurry of statements, phone calls and public appearances on Monday, suggesting that they would continue to prop him up with military and diplomatic aid, as they have done since the Syrian civil war first threatened his autocratic rule in 2011.
But it remains to be seen if they can back that rhetoric up by halting the rebel advance, especially since neither have committed to sending ground troops to shore up Mr. al-Assad. Just the fact that the rebels were able to seize a large expanse of government-held territory in a few days showed weaknesses in the partnership that had helped Mr. al-Assad survive years of conflict.
In a call between Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, and President Masoud Pezeshkian of Iran, the two leaders expressed “unconditional support” for Syria’s government, calling the rebel offensive a “large-scale aggression by terrorist groups and gangs,” according to a statement from the Kremlin’s press office.
Russia’s indiscriminate bombing of hospitals, schools and other civilian infrastructure as well as rebel targets in Syria helped turned the tide of the war in Mr. al-Assad’s favor nearly a decade ago. But Moscow has been preoccupied with its invasion of Ukraine.
Iran and the militia it backs in Lebanon, Hezbollah, both supplied fighters to bolster Syria’s military. But they have taken a series of body blows from Israel during the regionwide conflict of the last year. Hezbollah’s leadership is decimated and its forces battered after its most recent war with Israel, which ended with a cease-fire last week.
Still, Mr. al-Assad’s backers appeared to be mobilizing to help. Several thousand fighters from such groups had already been stationed along the Iraq-Syria border, according to a senior Iraqi security official who declined to be named to discuss a sensitive matter, and according to members of three armed factions. All three groups said there were more forces ready to come to Mr. al-Assad’s defense if the rebel offensive advanced further.
Russia, which has warplanes stationed at a base in Syria, continued pounding territory captured by the rebels with airstrikes.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor, said Syrian and Russian planes had struck targets across the provinces of Aleppo, Idlib and Hama. It said at least 13 civilians had been killed in one strike near the city of Idlib, including eight children, and dozens of others injured; in another, Russian warplanes killed four civilians, including two civilians, in Aleppo, it said.
The renewed conflict was complicating matters for another group opposed to Mr. al-Assad: Kurdish fighters who had held parts of Aleppo province and who rebel officials said on Monday were evacuating the area by bus.
Viewed by Turkey as a historical enemy, and too weak to take on the Syrian rebels leading the advance, analysts said, the Kurdish fighters had little choice but to take the rebel leadership’s offer of safe passage to northeastern Syria, where the United States has partnered with their commanders in the fight against the Islamic State for much of the last decade.
The Observatory said one of the strikes on Monday had hit a camp for displaced people in northern Idlib. The White Helmets, a Syrian civil defense group that said it had responded to the strike, said it had recovered the bodies of five children and two women and taken 12 more for medical treatment.
The rebels responded with at least one drone strike, including one on a group of military officials in northern Hama, according to rebel officials. A rebel spokesman who gave his name as Ali al-Rifai said that one of those targeted was Maj. Gen. Suhail al-Hassan, a special forces commander who became notorious among the Syrian opposition for his role in overseeing the bombing of civilian areas. It was unclear if General al-Hassan, who is subject to U.S. sanctions, survived.
The New York Times could not independently verify the information from either side.
Videos and photos posted by the group and by a local media activist, which were verified by The New York Times, showed torn-up tents and families’ belongings lying in broken heaps among olive trees at what they said was the site of the strike on the camp for the displaced.
The activist, Anas Maraawi, says in his video that the camp housed Syrians displaced from their homes who had lived in the field for years. Two families’ tents were hit while they were having breakfast, he says, while a third tent that was struck had served as a kitchen.
Another local activist, Mustafa Hashem, shared videos with The Times that he said he had filmed at the hospital where the victims were taken. In one clip, a woman has fallen to her knees, apparently in grief, while a few others try to help her up.
“This is a 4-year-old child — where are the terrorists that they say they are bombing?” a man says in another clip, standing among body bags laid out on a blood-streaked floor. “They are all children.”
A child’s head can be seen protruding from one short bag. Another man zips it up.
Russia and Iran, along with Syria’s government, have long painted the rebels as terrorists, and their public statements on Monday were little different.
Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, visited Damascus on Sunday to convey support for Mr. al-Assad in the fight against “the dangers posed by terrorists,” a spokesman for Iran’s foreign ministry said on Monday, according to Tasnim, a semiofficial Iranian news agency.
Mr. Araghchi then went to Ankara, Turkey’s capital, where he said in a Monday news conference with his Turkish counterpart that Iran would “provide any support deemed necessary to eliminate the infidels,” IRNA, a state news agency, reported.
The group leading the current offensive is Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which was linked to the Islamic State and Al Qaeda until breaking with both years ago. The group has tried to portray itself as more moderate in recent years, but is still considered a terrorist group by the United States.
Wariness of the group’s extremism leaves governments that once supported moderate rebels against Mr. al-Assad in a tricky spot, unable to endorse either side. The United States, Britain, France and Germany released a joint statement calling for civilians to be protected and for a political solution to the conflict.
Turkey, which analysts say tacitly cooperates with Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and openly backs other rebel groups across its border in northern Syria, has more leverage in the conflict, and has often brokered cease-fires in parts of Syria along with Russia and Iran. Its foreign minister, Hakan Fidan, called on Mr. al-Assad on Monday to negotiate with the opposition.
“The latest developments show once again that Damascus should reconcile with its own people and the legitimate opposition,” he said in Monday’s news conference with Mr. Araghchi, adding that Iran, Russia and Turkey would meet again to try to broker peace.
A negotiated political transition is also what the moderate opposition in exile has long pushed for, and the rebels’ startling gains appeared to reinvigorate those demands.
Though he does not speak for the rebels battling in Syria, an exiled opposition leader, Hadi al-Bahra, told a news conference broadcast from his base in Istanbul that the offensive was supported by a population weary of crimes committed by Mr. al-Assad and his foreign backers.
Like the United States and its Western allies, Mr. al-Bahra demanded the implementation of the stalled 2015 United Nations Security Council resolution 2254, which lays out a road map for Syria’s political transition, starting with a cease-fire. It is, he said, “the only sustainable political solution in Syria.”
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