BEIRUT, Lebanon: A monitor of Syria’s war said on Saturday that rebels controlled most of Aleppo, reporting Russian air strikes on parts of Syria’s second city for the first time since 2016.

Fighters have pressed a lightning offensive against forces of the Iranian- and Russian-backed Syrian government since Wednesday, as a fragile ceasefire took effect in neighbouring Lebanon between Israel and the Iran-backed Hezbollah group, a Damascus ally, after two months of all-out war.

“Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and allied factions... took control of most of the city and government centres and prisons”, said the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, “without meeting great resistance”.

Overnight, Russian “warplanes launched raids on areas of Aleppo city for the first time since 2016”, added the Observatory which relies on a network of sources inside Syria.

HTS, a jihadist alliance led by Al-Qaeda’s former Syria branch, controls swathes of the Idlib region in Syria’s northwest, as well as parts of neighbouring Aleppo, Hama and Latakia provinces.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said later on Saturday that “at least 16 civilians were killed and 20 others wounded” when “warplanes, likely Russian, targeted civilian vehicles” at a roundabout in the part of the city that has been overrun by fighters.