ALEPPO: President Ahmed al-Sharaa visited Syria’s northern city of Aleppo on Saturday as the country marks a year since a lightning Islamist-led offensive that eventually toppled longtime ruler Bashar al-Assad last December.

The anti-Assad alliance, led by Sharaa, entered Aleppo on November 29 last year and swiftly took control of Syria’s second city.

“Aleppo was reborn, and with its rebirth, all of Syria was reborn. In moments like these, a new history for all of Syria was being written, through Aleppo and its proud citadel,” Sharaa said on Saturday, addressing a crowd of hundreds from outside the city’s famous monument.

Shortly afterwards, he appeared at the top of the citadel’s tower near a huge Syrian flag.

Aleppo was an early venue for anti-Assad demonstrations in 2011 that spiralled into civil war. For four years, the city was divided between a government loyalist sector in the west — with most of the population — and rebels in a small zone in the east.

The Assad government was accused of dropping barrel bombs from helicopters and other aircraft onto rebel areas, while the insurgents fired rockets into government territory.

Ally Russia came to Assad’s assistance in September 2015, helping government forces to lay siege to the rebel zone by cutting off its last supply route.

Assad’s forces reclaimed complete control of the city on December 22, 2016, when a final convoy of rebels and civilians left eastern Aleppo.

Sharaa’s forces launched their lightning offensive on November 27 last year.

They went on to seize Damascus on December 8, toppling Assad and ending more than half a century of his family dynasty’s iron-fisted rule.

Published in Dawn, November 30th, 2025