Four said killed in attack by Syrian rebel groups on Aleppo university dorms

Four civilians including two students were killed earlier today in the Syrian city of Aleppo in insurgent shelling of university student dormitories, the state news agency SANA reports, amid intense fighting surrounding the northern city.

More than 240 people, mostly combatants, have been killed in the fighting after rebel groups launched a major offensive on government-held areas this week, a monitor says.

On Wednesday, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and allied Turkish-backed factions launched an attack on government-held areas in the northwest, triggering the fiercest fighting since 2020, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says.

Rami Abdel Rahman, who heads the Observatory, says fighting reached two kilometers (1.2 miles) from the main northern city of Aleppo, where artillery shelling on student housing killed four civilians, according to state media.

“The combatants’ death toll in the ongoing… operation in the Idlib and Aleppo countrysides has risen to 218,” since Wednesday, says the British-based monitor with a network of sources inside Syria.

In addition to the fighters, it says 24 civilians were killed.

HTS, which is listed as a terrorist organization by the United States and Turkey, has long been targeted by the Syrian government and Russian forces. Formerly known as the Nusra Front, the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda, HTS later changed its name several times and distanced itself from al-Qaeda.