Syria Rebels Reach Aleppo, in Biggest Advance in Years

Syrian rebels reached the major city of Aleppo on Friday, according to the fighters and a war monitor, raising fears that the nation’s long-running civil war is reigniting with an intensity not seen in years.

Government forces and their Russian allies launched intense airstrikes on opposition-held territory on Friday, including 23 attacks on the city of Idlib, according to the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a war monitoring group. The Russian government confirmed that it was bombing Syrian rebels, but did not specify where.

Antigovernment fighters managed on Friday to breach five neighborhoods in the western part of Aleppo after detonating two car bombs targeting government soldiers, according to the rebels and the Observatory. The official Syrian news agency, SANA, reported that four people were killed when rebels fired on Aleppo University, in the western part of the city.

The United Nations’ humanitarian agency said that Aleppo’s international airport and some of its hospitals were closed, other hospitals were near capacity and security within the city was “rapidly deteriorating.”

On the ground, the opposition forces did not appear to meet much resistance from the Syrian military.

The rebel offensive launched on Wednesday is the most serious challenge to President Bashar al-Assad’s regime in years. And the timing of it has raised questions about whether the rebels are trying to take advantage of weakness across an alliance with Iran at the center, and groups like Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Syrian regime closely aligned with it.