Syria rebels take control of key areas, as Russian airstrikes kills civilians

Rebel forces opposing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad have launched their biggest offensive in years this week and took control of key areas in Syria including the Aleppo airport, and strategic towns in the Idlib and Hama provinces, according to foreign news agencies, even as the simmering conflict left 16 civilians dead on Saturday after an airstrike allegedly carried out Damascus ally Russia.

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A Syrian war monitor said that as of Saturday, rebels controlled most of Aleppo, while the Russian airstrikes on parts of Syria's second city were carried out for the first time since 2016. The lightning offensive by the rebels against forces of the Iranian and Russian-backed Syrian government is happening against the backdrop of a fragile ceasefire in neighbouring Lebanon between Israel and the Iran-backed Hezbollah group, also a Damascus ally, after nearly two months of allout war.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Saturday that "at least 16 civilians were killed and 20 others wounded" when "warplanes, likely Russian, targeted civilian vehicles" at a roundabout in the part of the city that has been overrun by fighters.

"Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and allied factions... took control of most of the city and government centres and prisons", said the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, "without meeting great resistance". Overnight, Russian "warplanes launched raids on areas of Aleppo city for the first time since 2016", added the Observatory which relies on a network of sources inside Syria.

HTS, a jihadist alliance led by Al-Qaeda's former Syria branch, controls swathes of the Idlib region in Syria's northwest, as well as parts of neighbouring Aleppo, Hama and Latakia provinces. The Syrian army said that "armed terrorist organisations"-a term it uses for all its adversaries launched "a broad attack from multiple axes on the Aleppo and Idlib fronts" and reported fierce battles "over a strip exceeding 100km.

HTS has launched attacks against the Assad regime as it seeks to replace it with a governing body guided by a fundamentalist interpretation of Islamic law.