Insurgents recapture dozens of towns and villages, with reports of armoured vehicles on streets of Syria’s second city

Islamist militants have entered Syria’s second city of Aleppo in a shock assault, eight years after forces loyal to Damascus seized control of the city.

Fighters from the militant group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) began a major offensive earlier this week from their base in the Idlib countryside, a slim strip of land in Syria’s north-west that formed a base of rebel-held territory. It took only three days for the fighting to reach Aleppo, with insurgents capturing territory around the city’s outskirts for the first time in four years as Syrian government forces pummelled rebel-held areas.