AMMAN/BEIRUT – Hundreds of fighters from Iran-backed Iraqi militias entered Syria overnight to help the government fight rebels who seized Aleppo last week, Syrian and Iraqi sources said Monday , and Tehran pledged to help the government in Damascus.

At least 300 fighters, mainly from the Badr and Nujabaa groups, crossed the border on Sunday evening using a dirt road to avoid the official border post, two Iraqi security sources said.

“These are new reinforcements sent to help our comrades on the front lines in the north,” a senior Syrian military source said, adding that the fighters had crossed the border in small groups to avoid airstrikes.

Iran’s constellation of allied regional militias has long been integral to pro-government forces’ success in suppressing rebels who rose up against President Bashar al-Assad in 2011, and they have long maintained bases in Syria.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said Monday that the Syrian army was capable of confronting the rebels but, referring to regional militias backed by Tehran, he added that “the resistance groups will help and Iran will provide all necessary support.

The Syrian government and Russian warplanes intensified attacks Monday in rebel-held areas in the northwest, residents and rescue workers said, including a strike on a camp for displaced people that killed seven people.

The rebels’ lightning assault last week took many in the region by surprise, dealing Assad his biggest blow in years and reigniting a conflict that seemed frozen for years after the war’s front lines stabilized civil in 2020.

Although Russia has focused on the war in Ukraine since 2022, it maintains an air base in northern Syria. The main Iranian-backed group, Lebanon’s Hezbollah, has been focused on its own war with Israel since the Gaza conflict began last year.

The Syrian conflict erupted during a rebellion against the Assad regime in 2011 and rebels occupied much of Aleppo from 2012 to 2016, when government forces retook it with help from Russia and militias supported by Iran, at a major turning point in the war.

Any prolonged escalation in Syria risks further destabilizing a region already plagued by conflict in Gaza and Lebanon, with millions of Syrians already displaced and with regional and global powers backing rival forces in the country.

The rebels include traditional groups backed by Turkey, as well as the Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, formerly affiliated with Al-Qaeda. Turkey also has a military presence in a strip of Syrian territory along its border.

Kurdish-led forces, which Ankara labels terrorists but have fought Islamic State militants with U.S. help, occupy territory in the northeast.

AIR STRIKES

Russia, whose entry into the conflict in 2015 tipped the military balance decisively in favor of Assad, continues to support the Syrian president and analyzes the situation on the ground, the Kremlin spokesperson said, Dmitry Peskov.

On Sunday, Moscow fired the general in charge of its forces in Syria, Russian war bloggers reported.

The Syrian government said Syrian and Russian air forces were striking rebel-held positions in the countryside east of the city of Aleppo.

The White Helmets relief organization and residents of rebel-controlled areas in the north said warplanes hit residential areas in Aleppo city and a camp for displaced people in Idlib province , where seven people were killed, including five children.

The government said the army was working to secure a series of towns it recaptured from rebels on Sunday that stretch along the front line north of Hama, a town between Aleppo and the capital. Damascus.

In Türkiye, Syrian opposition leader Hadi al-Bahra said rebels were seeking to force the Syrian government to accept a political transition. “We are ready to start negotiations tomorrow,” Bahra told a news conference.

Rebel sources and an Aleppo resident said the Kurdish YPG group was withdrawing from Sheikh Maqsoud district as part of a deal with rebel forces. The YPG had long detained Sheikh Maqsoud. REUTERS