Terrorists attacked consulate in Aleppo, says Iran

TEHRAN: Iran said Saturday that “terrorist elements” had attacked its consulate in the Syrian city of Aleppo during a rebel offensive in the area. In a statement, Esmaeil Baghaei, the spokesman of the Iranian foreign ministry, “strongly condemned the attack” by “some armed terrorist elements” on the Iranian consulate, adding that all its staff members were safe. Meanwhile, the foreign ministers of Russia and Iran expressed “extreme concern” at escalating hostilities in Syria, where rebels launched an assault on the city of Aleppo, Moscow said Saturday. “Strong support for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Syrian Arab Republic was reaffirmed,” Moscow´s foreign ministry said in a readout of a call between Sergei Lavrov and

Iranian counterpart Abbas Araghchi. The Syrian army said on Saturday dozens of its soldiers had been killed in a major attack by rebels who swept into the city of Aleppo in the northwest, forcing the army to redeploy in the biggest challenge to President Bashar al-Assad in years. The surprise attack led by the Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham has jolted the frontlines of the Syrian civil war that have largely been frozen since 2020, reviving fighting in a corner of the fractured country near the Turkish border. The army said it was preparing a counteroffensive to restore state authority.