BEIRUT (AFP) – More than 240 people, mostly combatants, were killed as intense fighting approached Syria’s northern Aleppo city after extremists launched a major offensive on government-held areas this week, a monitor said yesterday.
On Wednesday, extremist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and allied factions launched an attack on government-held areas in the northwest, triggering the fiercest fighting since 2020, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
Rami Abdel Rahman, who heads the Observatory, said fighting reached two kilometres from the main northern city of Aleppo, where extremist artillery shelling on student housing killed four civilians, according to state media.
“The combatants’ death toll in the ongoing… operation in the Idlib and Aleppo countrysides has risen to 218,” since Wednesday, said the British-based monitor with a network of sources inside Syria. In addition to the fighters, it said 24 civilians were killed.
Syrian ally launched air strikes that killed 19 civilians on Thursday, while another civilian had been killed in Syrian army shelling a day earlier, said the Observatory which on Thursday had reported an overall toll of about 200 dead, including the civilians.
