Syria's civil war escalates...the rebels launched a major offensive in the northwestern part of the country.

The Syrian civil war, which had been lulling, is intensifying again.

AFP reported that Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the largest of Syrian rebels, and HTS have advanced toward Aleppo, the second-largest city in northwest Syria, and have launched a major offensive against government forces.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a U.K.-based civil war watchdog, said 255 people, including 24 civilians, were killed on both sides in an armed conflict sparked on the 27th by a small anti-government militant group backed by HTS and Turkiye.

The predecessor of the HTS is the al-Nusra front linked to the Islamic extremist terrorist group al-Qaeda, but it now officially claims to break ties with al-Qaeda and operate independently.

But the U.S. still believes it is connected to Al Qaeda.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says HTS and others have captured more than 50 villages in northern and northwest Syria and have advanced on the city of Aleppo to control five districts.

Russia and Iran, sponsors of Syria's Bashar al-Assad government, have also been on high alert for the first major rebel attacks in years.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov criticized HTS' attack on Syrian government forces as "an infringement on Syrian sovereignty in the region" and said at a briefing that he supported the Syrian authorities to restore order and constitutional order as soon as possible.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Arakchi called the Syrian rebel attack "the responsibility of the U.S. and Israeli regimes that lost Lebanon and Palestine," Reuters said.

On the other hand, rebel-backed Turkiye blamed Syrian government forces for bombing the northwestern Idlib region, Reuters said.

"The clashes between rebels and government forces in northwest Syria are undesirably escalating tensions," Turkiye said in a statement from a foreign ministry spokesperson, warning that "attacks on rebel-held Idlib province have undermined the spirit and implementation of the agreement to de-escalate tensions."

The Syrian rebel offensive appears to be linked to the current situation in which Russia is fighting the war in Ukraine and Iran has also directly or indirectly clashed with Israel in Lebanon and Gaza, weakening support for the Syrian government.

Syria's civil war, which erupted in 2011, was won by government forces led by President al-Assad thanks to Russian intervention in 2015, but it is far from over.