A bipartisan delegation of the United States Congress made a rare visit Sunday to Syria’s opposition-held territory in the north.
The delegation comprising Joe Wilson, Victoria Spartz and Dean Phillips entered Syria from Türkiye through the Bab al-Salama border crossing, where they were welcomed by a banner reading "Welcome to Free Syria" and revolutionary flags.
The delegation visited a hospital in the city of Azaz in Aleppo province and met orphans of the Syrian civil war, which has killed over 500,000 people since it erupted in 2011.
The visit's "purpose is to see the reality of the liberated areas," Yasser el-Hajji, spokesperson for the Syrian interim government, told Agence France Presse (AFP).
However, the delegation's visit had to be curtailed for security reasons, a member of their escort told AFP.
Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) controls much of Syria's last pocket of the armed opposition, which includes a significant part of Idlib province as well as bordering territories of Aleppo, Hama and Latakia provinces.
HTS, which is led by the Syrian branch of Al-Qaida, is classified as a terrorist group by Washington and Türkiye.
"The members of Congress wanted to assess the work of the interim government to study the possibility of delivering humanitarian aid via Bab el-Salama instead of Bab el-Hawa," which is controlled by HTS, said Rami Abdel Rahman, who heads the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which relies on a network of sources on the ground in Syria for its reports.
Under a 2014 agreement, most international aid including food, water and medicine entered from Türkiye via the Bab al-Hawa crossing without the authorization of Damascus.
The United Nations last month failed to reach a consensus on extending the mechanism through the Security Council, but subsequently announced that aid deliveries would resume through Bab al-Hawa.
Congressional representative Wilson had on Friday voiced his support for anti-regime protests spreading this month across southern Syria.
On X, formerly Twitter, he posted that the protests against Bashar Assad's regime "have inspired the world and demonstrate that Syria has no future and will never stabilize under Assad."
The protests in the south erupted late last week after the government ended fuel subsidies, dealing a heavy blow to Syrians already reeling from years of war and economic crisis.
