“Brigadier General Kioumars Pour Hashemi, known as Haji Hashem, one of the senior Iranian advisors, was martyred in Aleppo a few minutes ago in an attack by terrorist Takfiri mercenaries,” Iran’s semi-official Tasnim news agency, affiliated with the IRGC, said on Thursday.
Rebel forces spearheaded by Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) jihadists launched a major attack on Aleppo’s western countryside on Wednesday and reached within ten kilometers of Aleppo city, taking government positions and Syrian army bases along the way.
The clashes have left at least 153 fighters dead - 99 rebels and 54 regime forces - according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor.
HTS on Thursday opened another front and launched an attack towards Saraqib city in eastern Idlib province, taking control of several villages along the way.
Russia, the top ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, stepped in and carried out airstrikes against the advancing jihadists, according to the Observatory.
HTS, the former Syrian branch of al-Qaeda, is the prominent force among dozens of rebel factions in the northwest. The group, which has been internationally recognized as a terror organization, controls large swathes of Idlib and parts of Aleppo, Hama, and Latakia provinces.
A ceasefire brokered by Russia and Turkey has been in place in northwest Syria since March 2020, but violence has recently flared in the area.
More than 13 million Syrians, half the country’s pre-war population, have been displaced since the start of the civil war, more than 6 million of whom are refugees who have fled the war-torn country, according to United Nations figures.
