Syria’s rapidly advancing rebels said on Saturday they had begun encircling Damascus as government forces denied they had withdrawn from areas near the capital.
“Our forces have begun the final phase of the encirclement of the capital, Damascus,” said Hassan Abdel Ghani, a rebel commander in the Islamist-led coalition that launched the offensive.
The Defense Ministry categorically denied that the army had fled from positions near the city.
“There is no truth in the reports claiming that our armed forces have retreated from all areas of the Damascus countryside,” it said.
Earlier, a war monitor and Abdel Ghani said rebels were within 20 kilometers of Damascus as government forces retreated at an even greater pace due to the offensive.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said government forces had abandoned more vital ground, lost control of the entire southern Daraa province and evacuated checkpoints in Quneitra, near the Israel-held Golan Heights.
Government forces were also withdrawing from towns up to 10 kilometers (six miles) from Damascus, the monitor said.
Abdel Ghani had earlier said that “Our forces were able to control the Sassa (security) branch in the countryside of Damascus. The advance towards the capital continues.”
At least seven civilians were killed near the city of Homs in airstrikes and shelling by government forces and their ally Russia, as the army tried to slow rebel advances there.
The stunning rebel gain has brought the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and its allies to the doorstep of President Bashar al-Assad’s seat of power, more than a week into a renewed offensive in the long-stalled conflict. Has become aggressive.
As rebels have captured more territory, they have also tried to reassure people living in areas now under their control.
Abdel Ghani acknowledged in a statement on Telegram on Saturday that rebels had captured areas where “various religious sects and minorities” live.
He said, “We want all sects to be reassured… because the era of sectarianism and oppression is gone forever.”
Minorities have often been persecuted during Syria’s long conflict, and HTS’s predecessor al-Nusra Front, which is linked to al-Qaeda, carried out deadly attacks on Assad’s Alawite minority in Homs at the start of the war.
The army said it was redeploying to the south, where the Observatory said the government had lost control of Daraa province and the key city of the same name, the cradle of the 2011 rebellion.
An AFP correspondent in Daraa on Saturday saw local fighters guarding public property and civilian institutions.
In the central Homs region, a key stepping stone to the seat of power in Damascus, the Observatory said government forces had brought in “major reinforcements” and prevented rebel advances.
An army statement carried by state media said government forces were “redeploying and redeploying” to the southern provinces of Sweida and Daraa.
But both the observatory and rebels said government forces no longer had control over Daraa province.
The Britain-based monitor said that after rebels captured Aleppo and Hama, Daraa was taken by local armed groups.
In nearby Quneitra province, government forces “evacuated military and security positions, while civil servants abandoned their posts, making the province free from the Syrian army for the first time”, said Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman.
– Evacuation Call –
Daraa and Quneitra are near the Israeli-held Golan Heights, where Israel said it was increasing its military presence, and Jordan late Friday urged its citizens to leave Syria “as soon as possible.”
Russia and the United States, which have troops in Syria as part of the anti-jihadist coalition, have also advised their citizens to leave.
More than 500,000 people have been killed and more than half the population forced to flee their homes in Syria’s civil war, which began with Assad’s crackdown on democracy protests.
The HTS-led coalition has made rapid advances in the west since launching its offensive on November 27.
By Friday, the government was also withdrawing its troops from Deir Ezzor in the east, after Kurdish-led forces said they had moved in.
The HTS leader, known by his alias Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, said in an interview published on Friday that the offensive was aimed at ousting Assad from power.
“The goal of the revolution is to overthrow this regime. It is our right to use all available means to achieve that goal,” he told CNN.
HTS is rooted in the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda. Declared a terrorist organization by Western governments, it has tried to tone down its image in recent years.
The Kurdish-led and US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, which control the area in the east, expressed readiness for talks with rival rebels and Turkey and said the offensive had ushered in a “new” political reality for Syria. .
– ‘Syria is ours’ –
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken called for a “political resolution to the conflict” and the protection of civilians and minorities, his spokesman said in a call with Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan on Friday.
Fidan and his Iranian and Russian counterparts discussed Syria in Qatar on Saturday.
Qatar’s Prime Minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim al-Thani, said the world was “astounded” by the speed of the rebels’ progress, and called for “a political framework” to prevent violence from escalating.
He also said that Assad “has failed to establish and restore relations with his people”.
At least 826 people have been killed since the offensive began last week, according to the Observatory, mostly fighters but also 111 civilians, while the United Nations said the violence has displaced 370,000 people.
Many of the scenes seen in recent times would have been unimaginable earlier in the war.
In Hama, an AFP photographer saw residents set fire to a giant poster of Assad in front of city hall.
“Rebels entered Hama, it was a great joy for us – something we had been waiting for since 2011,” Maymouna Jawad said, expressing hope that anti-government forces would “liberate” the entire country.
Online footage verified by AFP showed residents pulling down a statue of Assad’s father Hafez, under whose brutal rule the army carried out a massacre in Hama in the 1980s.
(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
