BEIRUT: The Syrian army advanced towards the Turkish border on Monday in a major offensive backed by Russia and Iran that rebels say now threatens the future of their nearly five-year-old insurrection against President Bashar al-Assad.

Iranian backed-militias played a key role on the ground as Russian jets intensified what rebels call a scorched earth policy that has allowed the military back into the strategic northern area for the first time in more than two years.

“Our whole existence is now threatened, not just losing more ground,” said Abdul Rahim al-Najdawi from Liwa al-Tawheed, an insurgent group. “They are advancing and we are pulling back because in the face of such heavy aerial bombing we must minimise our losses.”

The Russian-backed Syrian government advance over recent days amounts to one of the biggest shifts in momentum of the war, helping to torpedo the first peace talks for two years, which collapsed last week before they had begun in earnest.

The Syrian military and its allies were almost five km from the rebel-held town of Tal Rafaat, which has brought them to around 25 km from the Turkish border, the rebels, residents and a conflict monitor said.

The assault around the city of Aleppo in northern Syria has prompted tens of thousands to flee towards Turkey, already sheltering more than 2.5 million Syrians.

In the last two days escalating Russian bombardment of towns northwest of Aleppo, Anadan and Haritan, brought several thousand more, according to a resident in the town of Azaz.

Aleppo, Syria’s largest city before the war with 2 million people, has been divided for years into rebel and government-held sections. The government wants to take full control, which would be its biggest prize yet in a war that has already killed at least 250,000 people and driven 11 million from their homes.

Rebel-held areas in and around Aleppo are still home to 350,000 people, and aid workers have said they could soon fall to the government. Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan was quoted at the weekend as saying Turkey was under threat, and Ankara has so far kept the border crossing there closed to most refugees.

After around a week of heavy Russian air strikes, Syrian government troops and their allies broke through rebel defences to reach two Shia towns in northern Aleppo province on Wednesday, choking opposition supply lines from Turkey.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she was “appalled” by the suffering of Aleppo, blaming primarily Russian bombing and suggesting it violated a UN Security Council resolution Moscow signed in December.

Kerem Kinik, Vice President of the Turkish Red Crescent, told reporters at the Oncupinar border crossing that Syrians were fleeing Russian strikes in panic. The closure of the road to Aleppo risked a much larger scale repeat of crises in Ghouta, a besieged Damascus suburb, or even Madaya, a blockaded town were residents have starved. “The route to Aleppo is completely closed and this is a road that was feeding all the main arteries inside Syria.

Published in Dawn, February 9th, 2016