BEIRUT (AP) — The last time Syrian President Bashar Assad was in serious trouble was 10 years ago, at the height of the country’s civil war, when his forces lost control over parts of the largest city, Aleppo, and his opponents were closing in on the capital, Damascus.

Back then, he was rescued by his chief international backer, Russia, and longtime regional ally Iran, which along with Lebanon’s powerful Hezbollah militia helped Assad’s forces retake Aleppo, tipping the war firmly in his favor.

Now, as insurgents pursue a shock offensive that quickly captured not just Aleppo, but the key city of Hama and a string of other towns across the country’s northwest, the Syrian leader appears to be largely on his own.

Russia is preoccupied with its war in Ukraine, and Hezbollah, which at one point sent thousands of its fighters to shore up Assad’s forces, has been weakened by a yearlong conflict with Israel. Iran, meanwhile, has seen its proxies across the region degraded by Israeli airstrikes.

Moreover, Syrian troops are exhausted and hollowed out by 13 years of war and economic crises, with little will left to fight.

So will Assad’s rule collapse in the near future?

“The coming days and weeks will be critical in determining whether the rebel offensive poses an existential threat to the Assad regime or whether the regime manages to regain its footing and push back on recent rebel gains,” said Mona Yacoubian, an analyst with the United States Institute for Peace.

“While weakened and distracted, Assad’s allies are unlikely to simply cave to the rebels’ offensive,” she wrote in an analysis.

Until recently, it seemed that Syria’s president was almost out of the woods. He never really won the long-running civil war, and large parts of the country were still outside his control.

But after 13 years of conflict, it appeared that the worst was over and that the world was ready to forget. Once viewed as a regional pariah, Assad saw Arab countries warming up to him again, renewing ties and reinstating Syria’s membership in the Arab League. Earlier this year, Italy also decided to reopen its embassy in Damascus after a decade of strained relations.

In the aftermath of one of the world’s largest humanitarian crises, aid groups and international donors in Syria began pivoting toward spending more on the country’s recovery than on emergency assistance, providing a lifeline for Syrians and restoring basic services.

But then the sudden offensive launched by insurgents on Nov. 27 reignited the war and caught everyone off guard with its scope and speed.

It also left Syria’s neighbors anxious, wary that violence and refugees could spill across borders and worried about the growing influence of Islamist groups, a major concern for most of Syria’s Arab neighbors.

Analysts say a confluence of geopolitical developments beginning with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, followed by the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza that started on Oct. 7, 2023, helped create the opportunity for Assad’s opponents to pounce.

As the rebels advanced this past week, Syrian forces appeared to melt away, putting up no resistance, with several reports of defection. Russian forces carried out occasional airstrikes. Hezbollah’s leader in Lebanon said the group will continue to support Syria, but made no mention of sending fighters again.

“The rebel assault underscores the precarious nature of regime control in Syria,” Yacoubian wrote.

“Its sudden eruption and the speed with which rebel groups managed to overtake Aleppo … expose the complex dynamics that reside just below the surface in Syria and can transform superficial calm into major conflict.”

Aron Lund, a Syria expert with Century International, a New York-based think tank and a researcher with the Swedish Defense Research Agency, said the developments in Syria are a geopolitical disaster for Russia and Iran.

“They too were surely surprised by what happened, and they have all sorts of resource constraints,” including Russia’s war in Ukraine and Hezbollah’s losses in Lebanon and Syria.

While the country’s conflict lines have been largely stalemated since 2020, Syria’s economic woes have only multiplied in the past few years.

The imposition of U.S. sanctions, a banking crisis in neighboring Lebanon and an earthquake last year contributed to the fact that almost all Syrians face extreme financial hardship.

That has caused state institutions and salaries to wither.

“If you can’t pay your soldiers a living wage, then maybe you can’t expect them to stay and fight when thousands of Islamists storm” their cities, Lund said. “It is just an exhausted, broken and dysfunctional regime” to start with.

Part of the insurgents’ attempt to reassert their grip on Aleppo, the city where they were ousted in 2016 after a grueling military campaign, was to issue a call to government soldiers and security agencies to defect, granting them what they called “protection cards,” which offer some sort of amnesty and assurances that they won’t be hunted down.

The spokesman for the insurgents, Hassan Abdul-Ghani, said more than 1,600 soldiers have applied for the cards over two days in Aleppo city.

Hundreds of defectors lined up outside city police stations Thursday to register their details with the insurgents.

Hossam al-Bakr, 33, originally from Hama who served in Damascus and defected four years earlier to Aleppo, said he came to “settle his position” and get a new ID.

The laminated card handed out to each defector was titled the “defection card.” It showed the name, ID number and place of service of each defector. It is issued by “The General Command: Military Operations Room.”

On Thursday, Maj. Mohamed Ghoneim, who was in charge of registering the defectors, said more than 1,000 soldiers or police officers came to register. Some who were in possession of their official guns handed them over, he added.

“There are thousands who want to apply,” he said.

Charles Lister, a longtime Syria expert, said while most of the international community has written off the conflict as either frozen or finished, the armed opposition has never given up and has been training for such a scenario for years.

A ragtag group of militias, plagued by infighting and rivalry, spent years preparing and organizing, propelled by a dream to regain control of territory from Assad.

“The regime has been more vulnerable over the last year or two than it has perhaps been throughout the entirety of the conflict,” Lister said. “And it has gotten used to the idea that if it can wait things out, it will ultimately prove to be the victor.”

Karam reported from London.

BEIRUT (AP) — The Syrian military rushed reinforcements to the northwest and launched airstrikes Sunday in an attempt to push back insurgents who seized the country’s largest city of Aleppo, as Iran pledged to help the government counter the surprise offensive.

Iran has been a key political and military ally of Syrian President Bashar Assad in his country’s civil war, but it was unclear how Tehran would support Damascus in the latest flareup. Insurgents led by jihadi group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham launched a two-pronged attack on Aleppo and the countryside around Idlib on Wednesday, before moving toward neighboring Hama province.

On Sunday, government troops created a “strong defensive line” in northern Hama, as they attempted to stall the insurgents’ momentum, according to Britain-based opposition war monitor the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Meanwhile, jets pounded the cities of Idlib and Aleppo, killing at least 25 people, according to the Syrian civil defense group that operates in opposition-held areas.

The surge in fighting has raised the prospect of another violent, destabilizing front reopening in the Middle East at a time when Israel is fighting Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, conflicts that have repeatedly threatened to ignite an even wider regional war. It also risks drawing Russia and Turkey — each with its own interests to protect in Syria — into direct heavy fighting against each other.

The insurgents announced their offensive Wednesday, just as a ceasefire started between Hezbollah and Israel that raised some hope tensions in the region might be calming.

The surprise offensive is a huge embarrassment for Assad, and it comes at a time when his allies — Iran and groups it backs and Russia — are preoccupied with their own conflicts.

According to a statement from Assad’s office, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi reassured the Syrian leader during a visit to Damascus that Tehran was ready to support the government in their counteroffensive.

Arab leaders, including Jordan’s King Abdullah II and United Arab Emirates President Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, have also called Assad to express their solidarity.

Late Sunday, multiple Western governments jointly urged a de-escalation by all parties and protection of civilians and infrastructure “to prevent further displacement and disruption of humanitarian access.” The statement by the U.S., U.K., French and German governments said they were watching the situation closely and that the escalation underscored the urgent need for a political solution.

The insurgents took over most of Aleppo on Saturday and made gains in the surrounding province. They also seized the main water pumping station for city and it is no longer working, Syrian Minister of Water Resources Moataz Qattan told the pro-government radio station Sham FM.

Elsewhere, rebel commander Col. Hassan Abdulghani said the insurgents advanced in the countryside around Idlib, putting all of the province of the same name under their control.

They also claimed to have entered the city of Hama, but there was no independent confirmation of that.

In Khan Sheikhoun in Idlib province, military vehicles abandoned by Syrian troops dotted the roads. People posed and took pictures of themselves atop one abandoned tank on a highway, while the insurgents grabbed munitions and shells from them before continuing their push deeper into Syria.

The insurgents vowed to push all the way into Damascus, but life in the Syrian capital remained normal with no signs of panic. In southeastern Aleppo, however, the main road out of the city was gridlocked as people fled the fighting, and gas stations in the area were short on fuel.

The rebels also made it into Tel Rifaat, a town near Aleppo held by U.S.-backed Syrian Kurdish forces, according to pro-government pan-Arab Al Mayadeen TV.

Tel Rifaat is far from the large swaths of northeastern Syria that are controlled by the Kurdish troops, known as the Syrian Democratic Forces. A statement from the insurgency called on the SDF to leave the areas near Aleppo that they hold and retreat to their bastions in the northeast.

Despite being at odds politically with the Syrian government, the Kurdish-led administration has opposed the insurgency and accused Turkey, the main backer of Syrian opposition groups, of trying to displace the Kurdish population.

Turkish officials have said a limited offensive by the rebels was planned to stop government attacks on opposition-held areas in recent weeks, but it expanded as government forces began to retreat.

The United Nations special envoy for Syria, Geir Pedersen, said the push by the rebels poses a risk to regional security and called on resuming diplomatic efforts to end the conflict.

U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan told CNN’s “State of the Union” that the U.S. is watching the situation carefully. There are about 900 American troops in Syria’s northeast — far from where the insurgency is happening — who are meant to guard against a resurgence by the extremist Islamic State group.

The group leading the rebel advance is designated a terrorist organization by the U.S., and Sullivan said Washington has “real concerns about the designs and objectives of that organization.”

“At the same time, of course, we don’t cry over the fact that the Assad government, backed by Russia, Iran and Hezbollah, are facing certain kinds of pressure,” he added.

According to Syrian state news agency SANA and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the army overnight pushed back insurgents in the northern countryside of Hama province.

Syrian state media said government resupply included heavy equipment and rocket launchers while Syrian and Russian airstrikes targeted weapon depots and insurgent strongholds. Sham FM said the Syrian army shot down drones belonging to Hayat Tahrir al-Sham in northern Hama.

Syrian state television claimed government forces had killed nearly 1,000 insurgents over the past three days, without providing evidence or details.

Government airstrikes in Idlib and Aleppo killed at least 25 people, of which 14 are women and children, according to the Syrian Civil Defense, also known as the White Helmets, that operates in opposition-held areas.

Residents could be seen fleeing through ash-covered streets. Men lowered a child from the high floor of a building whose facade was blown off.

Airstrikes also struck in and around Aleppo, including near a hospital in the city center, killing 12 people, including at least eight civilians, according to the White Helmets and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

The 2016 battle for Aleppo was a turning point in the war between Syrian government forces and rebel fighters after 2011 protests against Assad’s rule turned into an all-out war. After appearing to be losing control of the country to the rebels, the Aleppo battle secured Assad’s hold on strategic areas of Syria, with opposition factions and their foreign backers controlling areas on the periphery.

BEIRUT (AP) — Thousands of Syrian insurgents took over most of Aleppo on Saturday, establishing positions in the country’s largest city and controlling its airport before expanding their shock offensive to a nearby province. They faced little to no resistance from government troops, according to fighters and activists.

A war monitor, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said the insurgents led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham seized control of Aleppo International airport, the first international airport to be controlled by insurgents. The fighters claimed they seized the airport and postefd pictures from there.

Thousands of fighters also moved on, facing almost no defense from government forces, to seize towns and villages in northern Hama, a province where they had a presence before being expelled by government troops in 2016. They claimed Saturday evening to have entered Hama city.

The swift and surprise offensive is a huge embarrassment for Syria’s President Bashar Assad and raised questions about his armed forces’ preparedness. The insurgent offensive launched from their stronghold in the country’s northwest appeared to have been planned for years. It also comes at a time when Assad’s allies were preoccupied with their own conflicts.

Turkey, a main backer of Syrian opposition groups, said its diplomatic efforts had failed to stop government attacks on opposition-held areas in recent weeks, which were in violation of a de-escalation agreement sponsored by Russia, Iran and Ankara. Turkish security officials said a limited offensive by the rebels was planned to stop government attacks and allow civilians to return, but the offensive expanded as Syrian government forces began to retreat from their positions.

The insurgents, led by the Salafi jihadi group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and including Turkey-backed fighters, launched their shock offensive on Wednesday. They first staged a two-pronged attack in Aleppo and the Idlib countryside, entering Aleppo two days later and securing a strategic town that lies on the highway that links Syria’s largest city to the capital and the coast.

By Saturday evening, they seized at least four towns in the central Hama province and claimed to have entered the provincial capital. The insurgents staged an attempt to reclaim areas they controlled in Hama in 2017 but failed.

Syria’s armed forces said in a statement Saturday that to absorb the large attack on Aleppo and save lives, it redeployed troops and equipment and was preparing a counterattack. The statement acknowledged that insurgents entered large parts of the city but said they have not established bases or checkpoints. Later on Saturday, the armed forces sought to dispel what it said were lies in reference to reports about its forces retreating or defecting, saying the general command was carrying out its duties in “combatting terrorist organizations.”

The return of the insurgents to Aleppo was their first since 2016, following a grueling military campaign in which Assad’s forces were backed by Russia, Iran and its allied groups.

The 2016 battle for Aleppo was a turning point in the war between Syrian government forces and rebel fighters after 2011 protests against Assad’s rule turned into an all-out war. After appearing to be losing control of the country to the rebels, the Aleppo battle secured Assad’s hold on strategic areas of Syria, with opposition factions and their foreign backers controlling areas on the periphery.

The lightning offensive threatened to reignite the country’s civil war, which had been largely in a stalemate for years.

Late on Friday, witnesses said two airstrikes hit the edge of Aleppo city, targeting insurgent reinforcements and falling near residential areas. The Observatory said 20 fighters were killed.

Insurgents were filmed outside police headquarters, in the city center, and outside the Aleppo citadel, the medieval palace in the old city center, and one of the largest in the world. They tore down posters of Assad, stepping on some and burning others.

The push into Aleppo followed weeks of simmering low-level violence, including government attacks on opposition-held areas.

The offensive came as Iran-linked groups, primarily Lebanon’s Hezbollah, which has backed Syrian government forces since 2015, have been preoccupied with their own battles at home. A ceasefire in Hezbollah’s two-month war with Israel took effect Wednesday, the same day that Syrian opposition factions announced their offensive. Israel has also escalated its attacks against Hezbollah and Iran-linked targets in Syria during the last 70 days.

Speaking from the heart of the city in Saadallah Aljabri square, opposition fighter Mohammad Al Abdo said it was his first time back in Aleppo in 13 years, when his older brother was killed at the start of the war.

“God willing, the rest of Aleppo province will be liberated” from government forces, he said.

There was light traffic in the city center on Saturday. Opposition fighters fired in the air in celebration but there was no sign of clashes or government troops present.

Journalists in the city filmed soldiers captured by the insurgents and the bodies of others killed in battle.

Abdulkafi Alhamdo, a teacher who fled Aleppo in 2016 and returned Friday night after hearing the insurgents were inside, described “mixed feelings of pain, sadness and old memories.”

“As I entered Aleppo, I kept telling myself this is impossible. How did this happen?”

Alhamdo said he strolled through the city at night visiting the Aleppo citadel, where the insurgents raised their flags, a major square and the university of Aleppo, as well as the last spot he was in before he was forced to leave for the countryside.

“I walked in (the empty) streets of Aleppo, shouting, ‘People, people of Aleppo. We are your sons,’” he told The Associated Press in a series of messages.

Aleppo residents reported hearing clashes and gunfire but most stayed indoors. Some fled the fighting.

Schools and government offices were closed Saturday as most people stayed indoors, according to Sham FM radio, a pro-government station. Bakeries were open. Witnesses said the insurgents deployed security forces around the city to prevent any acts of violence or looting.

The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said Friday Aleppo’s two key public hospitals were reportedly full of patients while many private facilities closed.

In social media posts, the insurgents were pictured outside of the citadel, the medieval palace in the old city center, and one of the largest in the world. In cellphone videos, they recorded themselves having conversations with residents they visited at home, seeking to reassure them they will cause no harm.

The Syrian Kurdish-led administration in the country’s east said nearly 3,000 people, most of them students, had arrived in their region after fleeing the fighting in Aleppo, which has a sizeable Kurdish population.

State media reported that a number of “terrorists,” including sleeper cells, infiltrated parts of the city. Government troops chased them and arrested a number who posed for pictures near city landmarks, they said.

On a state TV morning show Saturday, commentators said army reinforcements and Russia’s assistance would repel the “terrorist groups,” blaming Turkey for supporting the insurgents’ push into Aleppo and Idlib provinces.

Russia’s state news agency Tass quoted Oleg Ignasyuk, a Russian Defense Ministry official coordinating in Syria, as saying that Russian warplanes targeted and killed 200 militants who had launched the offensive in the northwest on Friday. It provided no further details.

Associated Press writer Albert Aji in Damascus contributed to this report.

BEIRUT (AP) — Insurgents breached Syria’s largest city Friday and clashed with government forces for the first time since 2016, according to a war monitor and fighters, in a surprise attack that sent residents fleeing and added fresh uncertainty to a region reeling from multiple wars.

The advance on Aleppo followed a shock offensive launched by insurgents Wednesday, as thousands of fighters swept through villages and towns in Syria’s northwestern countryside. Residents fled neighborhoods on the city’s edge because of missiles and gunfire, according to witnesses in Aleppo. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the country’s unresolved civil war, said dozens of fighters from both sides were killed.

The attack injected new violence into a region experiencing dual wars in Gaza and Lebanon involving Israel, and other conflicts, including the Syrian civil war that began in 2011.

Aleppo has not been attacked by opposition forces since they were ousted from eastern neighborhoods in 2016 following a grueling military campaign in which Syrian government forces were backed by Russia, Iran and its allied groups.

But this time, there was no sign of a significant pushback from government forces or their allies. Instead, reports emerged of government forces melting away in the face of advances, and insurgents posted messages on social media calling on troops to surrender.

Robert Ford, who was the last U.S. ambassador to Syria, said the attack showed that Syrian government forces are “extremely weak.” In some cases, he said, they appear to have “almost been routed.”

This week’s advances were among the largest in recent years by opposition factions, led by the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham group, or HTS, and represent the most intense fighting in northwestern Syria since 2020, when government forces seized areas previously controlled by the opposition.

The offensive came as Iran-linked groups, primarily Lebanon’s Hezbollah, which has backed Syrian government forces since 2015, have been preoccupied with their own battles at home.

A ceasefire in Hezbollah’s two-month war with Israel took effect Wednesday, the day the Syrian opposition factions announced their offensive. Israel has also escalated its attacks against Hezbollah and Iran-linked targets in Syria during the last 70 days.

Dareen Khalifa, a senior adviser with the International Crisis Group and an expert on Syrian groups, said the insurgents have signaled for a while that they were ready for an offensive. But no one expected the swift advance of the forces toward Aleppo.

“It’s not only that the Russians are distracted and bogged down in Ukraine, but also the Iranians are distracted and bogged down elsewhere. Hezbollah’s distracted and bogged down elsewhere, and the regime is absolutely cornered,” she said. “But the surprise element comes in with how quickly the regime crumbled.”

The attack on Aleppo followed weeks of simmering low-level violence, including government attacks on opposition-held areas. Turkey, which has backed Syrian opposition groups, failed in its diplomatic efforts to prevent the government attacks, which were seen as a violation of a 2019 agreement sponsored by Russia, Turkey and Iran to freeze the line of the conflict.

Turkish security officials said Thursday that Syrian opposition groups initially launched a long-planned “limited” offensive toward Aleppo, where attacks targeting civilians originated. However, the offensive expanded as Syrian government forces began retreating from their positions, the officials said.

The aim of the offensive was to reestablish the boundaries of the de-escalation zone, according to Turkish officials.

The 2016 battle for Aleppo was a turning point in the war between Syrian government forces and rebel fighters after 2011 protests against Bashar Assad’s rule turned into an all-out war.

Russia and Iran and its allied groups helped Syrian government forces reclaim control of the city that year after a grueling military campaign and a siege that lasted for weeks.

Besides backing opposition forces, Turkey has also established a military presence in Syria, sending troops into parts of the northwest. Separately and largely in the east of Syria, the United States has supported Syrian Kurdish forces fighting Islamic State militants.

The Syrian government did not comment on insurgents breaching Aleppo city limits.

The Kremlin said Friday that it considered the attack an encroachment on Syria’s sovereignty and that it supported the quickest possible establishment of constitutional order in the region.

“Of course, this is a violation of Syria’s sovereignty in this region,” Russian presidential spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told a press briefing.

Syria’s armed forces said in a statement Friday that they clashed with insurgents in the countryside around Aleppo and Idlib, destroying drones and heavy weaponry. They vowed to repel the attack and accused the insurgents of spreading false information about their advances.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the insurgents detonated two car bombs Friday at the western edge of Aleppo. The war monitor said insurgents were also able to seize control of Saraqeb, south of Aleppo, a town at the strategic intersection of the highways linking Aleppo with Damascus and the coast. Syrian government authorities diverted traffic from that highway Thursday.

An insurgent commander posted a recorded message on social media calling on Aleppo residents to cooperate with the advancing forces.

Turkey’s state-run Anadolu Agency reported that the insurgents entered the city center Friday and now control about 70 locations in Aleppo and Idlib provinces.

Syria’s state media reported that projectiles from insurgents landed in student accommodations at Aleppo’s university in the city center, killing four people, including two students.

Syrian armed forces said the insurgents are violating a 2019 agreement that de-escalated fighting in the area, the last remaining opposition stronghold for years.

Hezbollah was “the main force” in the government’s control of Aleppo, said Rami Abdurrahman, head of the Observatory.

In a phone call with his Syrian counterpart, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi described the insurgent attacks in Syria “as a plot orchestrated by the U.S. and the Zionist regime following the regime’s defeat in Lebanon and Palestine.”

Insurgents posted videos online showing they were using drones, a new weapon for them. It was not clear to what extent the drones were used on the battleground.

Insurgents attacked a military airbase southeast of Aleppo with drones early Friday, destroying a helicopter, the Anadolu Agency reported. The opposition groups also seized heavy weapons and military vehicles belonging to the government forces, the agency said.

Associated Press writers Suzan Fraser in Ankara, Turkey; Albert Aji in Damascus, Syria; and Ellen Knickmeyer in Washington contributed to this report.