Early reports showed rebels walking around the seemingly abandoned but ostentatious palace.
(photo credit: screenshot)
President Bashar Assad’s Palace in Aleppo was invaded by Syrian rebels on Sunday evening, according to Arab media reports.
The take overcomes after Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) rebels swept into the city of Aleppo on Saturday, nearly encircling the remaining SAA pro-Regime forces, leading to a reinforcement by SDF-Kurdish forces.
The Palace was captured along with the nearby Aleppo Military Academy, during which they claimed to capture Russian air defense systems.
Almost the entirety of Aleppo is currently in rebel hands, except for a few Kurdish neighborhoods in the north of the city that still remain in SDF hands. Otherwise, the city has been encircled. Some reports indicated that HTS and the SDF were negotiating a withdrawal of SDF troops. However, the SDF denied this.
Serious collapse
This is the first time since the beginning of the Battle of Aleppo (2012-16) that the Assad regime has lost control of Syria’s second city, signaling a serious deterioration in control for the regime.
Reports indicate that all Assad troops have evacuated the city and that the only remaining non-rebel-held parts of the city are the northern Kurdish neighborhoods, which were reinforced and held by the SDF as regime troops pulled out.
The SDF and the SAA have tolerated each other since ISIS attempted to take over the region ten years ago, effectively partitioning the country into SDF-controlled (Kurdish majority) and SAA- controlled (Arab majority) regions.
In response to the near-total collapse of the Syrian lines, Iran reportedly sent over Shia militias from Iraq under the pretext of protecting Shia holy sites located in Syria, in particular Sayyida Zaynab Mosque in Damascus. The mosque is considered the burial place of Muhammad’s granddaughter Zaynab bint Ali by Twelver Shia. Not to be confused with the mosque with the same name in Cairo, which is considered to be her burial place in Ismaili Shia Islam.
Sunni Jihadist groups, such as those leading the Aleppo offensive, have regularly targeted Shia holy sites during the unrest that has rocked the Middle East since the Arab Spring in 2011. So far HTS have claimed that they will respect all holy sites in captured territory.
As reported by The Jerusalem Post