Syrian rebels reach central Aleppo as army announces temporary withdrawal

Military says dozens of soldiers killed in attacks in northwest and it was regrouping to launch a ‘counterattack’.

Syria’s military has announced a “temporary troop withdrawal” in the northwestern city of Aleppo, where rebel groups launched a surprise offensive on government-held positions for the first time in years.

The military said on Saturday that dozens of its soldiers had been killed or wounded in fierce battles with “armed terrorist organisations” in the governorates of Aleppo and Idlib over the previous few days and that it was now regrouping, redeploying troops to strengthen its defence lines as it prepared a “counterattack”.

It said that rebel groups had launched “a broad attack from multiple axes on the Aleppo and Idlib fronts”, reporting clashes “over a strip exceeding 100km [60 miles]”.

The army said the rebels had entered large parts of Aleppo but army bombardment had stopped them from establishing fixed positions. It promised to “expel them and restore the control of the state … over the entire city and its countryside”.

The statement marked the military’s first public acknowledgement that opposition fighters led by the Hay’et Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) group had entered Aleppo in the lightning attack that began earlier this week.