ALEPPO: Militants and their Turkish-backed allies reached Syria’s second city of Aleppo Friday, as they pressed a lightning offensive against forces of the Iranian and Russian-backed government.
The fighting is some of the deadliest in years, with 255 people killed, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Most of the dead have been combatants but the toll also includes 24 civilians, most killed in Russian air strikes.
The offensive began on Wednesday, the same day that a fragile ceasefire took effect in neighboring Lebanon between Israel and Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah.
By Friday, the militants and their allies had wrested control of more than 50 towns and villages in the north, according to the Britain-based Observatory, in the government’s biggest loss of territory in years.
They then entered western districts of Aleppo, a city of some two million people that was Syria’s pre-war manufacturing hub.
“Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS) and allied factions... were able to enter the outskirts of the Al-Hamdaniya and New Aleppo neighborhoods... after carrying out twin suicide attacks with two booby-trapped cars,” the war monitor said.
HTS, an Islamist alliance led by Al-Qaeda’s former Syria branch, shelled a student residence in the city, killing four civilians, state media reported.
Syrian and Russian warplanes launched intense air strikes on the rebel enclave around Idlib, where the militants are based, carrying out 23 raids, according to the Observatory.
Army reinforcements have arrived in Aleppo, a Syrian security official told AFP, requesting anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.
An army statement said troops had repelled the assault on the city and retaken some positions.
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said “more than 14,000 people — nearly half are children — have been displaced” by the violence.
Aleppo resident Sarmad, 51, told AFP he could hear “the sounds of missiles and artillery shelling around the clock.”
“We’re scared that war will break out and we’ll be displaced from our homes again,” he said.
Nasser Hamdo, 36, who works in a pastry shop, said he had been glued to the news since hostilities began.
On Thursday, the militants and their allies cut the highway linking Aleppo to the capital Damascus, some 300 kilometers (185 miles) south, the Observatory said.
“We’re worried that roads getting blocked could cause fuel prices to soar and prevent goods from reaching the city,” Hamdo said.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Friday described the situation in Aleppo as “an infringement on the sovereignty of Syria.”
He expressed support for “the government of Syria to quickly restore order in this district.”
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi pledged “continued support for the government, nation and army of Syria,” in a phone call with his Syrian counterpart Bassam Al-Sabbagh, according to a statement.
The Idlib area has been subject to a Turkish- and Russian-brokered truce since 2020. The ceasefire has been repeatedly violated but had largely held.
An AFP correspondent in the rebel enclave saw militants advancing in tanks as intense exchanges of fire took place in an area just seven kilometers (a little over four miles) from Aleppo.
AFP images showed abandoned army tanks and other military vehicles.
The correspondent said the militants and their Turkiye-backed allies took orders from a joint operations command.
Analyst Nick Heras, of the New Lines Institute for Strategy and Policy, said the fighters were “trying to preempt the possibility of a Syrian military campaign in the region of Aleppo.”
According to Heras, the Syrian government and its key backer Russia had been preparing for such a campaign.
Russia intervened in Syria in 2015, turning the tide of the civil war which broke out four years earlier in favor of the government, whose forces at the time had lost control of most of country.
Other interests are also at stake.
As well as Russia, Syrian President Bashar Assad has been propped up by Iran and allied militant groups, including Lebanon’s Hezbollah.
Iran-backed militias have a heavy presence in the Aleppo region after providing crucial ground support to the army in its recapture of rebel-held areas of the city in 2016.
Heras said anti-government forces are “in a better position to take and seize villages than Russian-backed Syrian government forces, while the Iranians are focused on Lebanon.”
Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman said government forces “were totally unprepared” for the attack.
“It is strange to see regime forces being dealt such big blows despite Russian air cover and early signs that HTS was going to launch this operation,” Abdel Rahman said.
“Were they depending on Hezbollah, which is now busy in Lebanon?”
Militants, allies enter Syria’s second city Aleppo in lightning assault
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Militants, allies enter Syria’s second city Aleppo in lightning assault
- The violence has killed 242 people, according to a Syrian war monitor
- The fighters had on Thursday cut the highway linking Aleppo to Syria’s capital Damascus
Paramilitary attack on Sudan famine-hit camp kills 25: activists
The attack, which involved shelling and intense gunfire, “targeted Zamzam displacement camp from both the southern and eastern directions,” said the local resistance committee, a volunteer aid group in North Darfur’s besieged capital of El-Fasher.
Zamzam and other densely populated camps for the displaced around El-Fasher have suffered heavily during nearly two years of fighting between Sudan’s army and the RSF.
The paramilitaries have stepped up its efforts to complete their conquest of Darfur, Sudan’s vast western region, since losing control of the capital Khartoum last month.
Eyewitnesses described seeing RSF combat vehicles infiltrating the camp under cover of heavy gunfire.
The local resistance committee said the attack was met with counter-fire but the full extent of damage was unclear due to disrupted communications and Internet shutdowns.
Zamzam was the first part of Sudan where a UN-backed assessment declared famine last year.
The conflict in Sudan has killed tens of thousands of people and uprooted more than 12 million since a struggle for power between rival generals erupted into full-blown war on April 15, 2023.
More Sudanese refugees fleeing as far as Europe, UN refugee agency says
- Olga Sarrado, UN refugee agency spokesperson, told a press briefing in Geneva that some 484 Sudanese had arrived in Europe in January and February, up 38 percent from the same period last year
GENEVA: Over a thousand Sudanese refugees have reached or attempted to reach Europe in early 2025, the United Nations’ refugee agency said on Friday, citing growing desperation in part due to reduced aid in the region.
Some 12 million people have been displaced by the two-year conflict between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces that has fueled what UN officials call the world’s most devastating aid crisis.
While some have recently returned home to Khartoum, millions of others in neighboring countries like Egypt and Chad face tough choices as services for refugees are being cut, including by the United States as part of an aid review.
Olga Sarrado, UN refugee agency spokesperson, told a press briefing in Geneva that some 484 Sudanese had arrived in Europe in January and February, up 38 percent from the same period last year.
Around 937 others were rescued or intercepted at sea and returned to Libya — more than double last year’s figures for the same period, she added.
“As humanitarian aid crumbles and if the war does not abate, many more will have little choice than to join them,” she said.
Migrant deaths hit a record last year, the UN migration agency said, with many perishing on the Mediterranean crossing which is one of the world’s most dangerous.
UN: 36 Israeli strikes in Gaza killed ‘only women and children’
- UN rights office spokesperson warns the military strikes across Gaza were ‘leaving nowhere safe’
- Israel has said its troops are seizing ‘large areas’ in Gaza and incorporating them into buffer zones cleared of their inhabitants
GENEVA: The United Nations on Friday said it analysis of 36 Israeli strikes in Gaza showed only women and children were killed and decried the human cost of the war.
The UN rights office also warned that expanding Israeli evacuation orders were resulting in the “forcible transfer” of people into ever-shrinking spaces in the war-ravaged Palestinian territory.
Spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani warned the military strikes across Gaza were “leaving nowhere safe.”
“Between 18 March and 9 April 2025, there were some 224 incidents of Israeli strikes on residential buildings and tents for internally displaced people,” she told reporters in Geneva.
“In some 36 strikes about which the UN Human Rights Office corroborated information, the fatalities recorded so far were only women and children,” she said.
“Overall, a large percentage of fatalities are children and women, according to information recorded by our Office,” she added.
Shamdasani cited an April 6 strike on a residential building of the Abu Issa family in Deir al Balah, which reportedly killed one girl, four women, and one four-year-old boy.
She highlighted that even the areas where Palestinians were being instructed to go in the expanding number of Israeli “evacuation orders” were also being subjected to attacks.
“Despite Israeli military orders instructing civilians to relocate to the Al Mawasi area of Khan Younis, strikes continued on tents in that area housing displaced people, with at least 23 such incidents recorded by the Office since 18 March,” she said.
Shamdasani referred to a March 31 order by the Israeli military covering all of Rafah, the southernmost governorate in Gaza, followed by a large-scale ground operation.
Israel has said its troops are seizing “large areas” in Gaza and incorporating them into buffer zones cleared of their inhabitants.
“Large areas are being seized and added to Israel’s security zones, leaving Gaza smaller and more isolated,” Israel’s Defense Minister Israel Katz said Wednesday.
“Let us be clear, these so-called evacuation orders are actually displacement orders, leading to displacement of the population of Gaza into ever shrinking spaces,” Shamdasani said.
“The permanently displacing the civilian population within occupied territories amounts to forcible transfer, which is a grave breach of the Fourth Geneva Convention, and it is a crime against humanity.”
WHO: Medicine critically low due to Gaza aid block
- Lack of medicine making it hard to keep hospitals even partially operational
GENEVA: Medicine stocks are critically low due to the aid block in Gaza, making it hard to keep hospitals even partially operational, the World Health Organization said on Friday.
“We are critically low in our three warehouses, on antibiotics, IV fluids and blood bags,” WHO official Rik Peeperkorn told reporters in Geneva via video link from Jerusalem.
Yemen ‘not a battleground for settling scores,’ says top government official
- Brig. Gen. Tariq Mohammed Abdullah Saleh calls for stronger support for Yemeni forces on the ground to restore balance
DUBAI: Yemen is “not a battleground for settling scores, nor part of any external compromises,” a top government official told Asharq Al-Awsat in an exclusive interview.
Brig. Gen. Tariq Mohammed Abdullah Saleh, a member of Yemen’s Presidential Leadership Council with vice-presidential rank, further emphasized that diminishing the country to a pawn between powerful nations engaged in political play undermines its sovereignty and regional security.
“The world would be making a mistake by accepting Yemen as a bargaining chip in Iranian negotiations,” said Saleh, who also heads the Political Bureau of the National Resistance. He also emphasized Yemen’s strategic importance to global shipping routes.
Saleh has remained largely out of public view since the US intensified its air campaign against the Iran-aligned Houthis to stop the threat they pose to civilian shipping and military vessels in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden.
He further warned that keeping Yemen “a base for the Iranian Revolutionary Guard” threatens not only Yemenis but also regional and international interests.
But achieving stability in the conflict-ridden country hinges on supporting a national state rooted in constitutional rule and genuine popular consensus, not on short-term geopolitical deals, Saleh added.
He called for stronger support for Yemeni forces on the ground to restore balance, not as a tool for escalation, but because it is a national imperative to protect civilians and preserve hard-won gains.
He said the Yemeni government was in ongoing coordination with international partners and the Saudi-led coalition backing legitimacy in Yemen to secure further assistance for the national struggle.
Cooperation with regional and international partners to bolster the country’s coast guard, particularly in the Red Sea, a strategic artery for global trade, also continues, the Yemeni official said.
Maritime security cannot be separated from national sovereignty, and defending sea lanes was integral to restoring state authority on land and at sea, Saleh said.
On achieving peace in Yemen, Saleh said: “There is no meaning to any settlement that does not subject the Houthis to the Yemeni constitution and the rule of law.” He discounted any notion that the militia group could be accommodated outside a constitutional framework.
“Peace cannot be granted to a group that rejects the state,” he said. “It is forged when the state regains the capacity to enforce the law and protect its citizens.”
For Saleh, forging a peace agreement with the Houthis — whom he describes as a bloodthirsty group with no commitment to national frameworks and an ideology rooted in an enemy state — was virtually nonexistent.
He accused the Houthis of placing their leadership and institutions tied to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps above Yemen’s state institutions.
“Governance is about managing people’s affairs based on shared frameworks,” Saleh said. “The Houthis do not abide by any of that.”
Saleh has put direct blame on Iran for perpetuating the conflict through its armed proxies, keeping Yemen hostage to violence and rebellion, although Tehran has continually denied its involvement.
Saleh also acknowledged the challenges facing the Presidential Leadership Council, and described the internal disagreements as “natural,” given the complexity of the crisis in Yemen.
“In the end,” he said, “what unites us is greater than any differences.
“Disagreements are natural in any leadership body, particularly in exceptional conditions like Yemen’s,” he said. “But more important is our ability to navigate this diversity and divergence while remaining committed to the national interest.”
