Syrian government forces have lost control of the city of Daraa, a war monitor said, in another surprise blow to President Bashar al-Assad’s regime after rebels seized other major cities.
Daraa was dubbed the “cradle of the revolution” at the beginning of the Syrian civil war, as activists accused the government of detaining and torturing a group of boys for writing anti-Assad graffiti on the walls of their school in 2011. Was accused.
Aleppo and Hama, the two other main cities wrested from government control in recent days, fell to the Islamist-led rebel coalition, while Daraa fell to local armed groups, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
“Local groups have taken control of more areas in Daraa province, including the city of Daraa… They now control more than 90 percent of the province, as regime forces gradually push back,” the Britain-based Observatory said late Friday. Moving away.” A network of sources around Syria.
Daraa province borders Jordan.
Despite a ceasefire brokered by Assad’s ally Russia, it has been plagued by unrest in recent years with frequent attacks, clashes and killings.
– Waves of violence –
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.
Never in the war had Assad’s forces lost control of so many major cities in such a short period of time.
Since a rebel coalition led by Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham began its offensive on November 27, the government has lost the second city of Aleppo and then Hama in central Syria.
Rebels were at the gates of Syria’s third city of Homs on Friday, as the government withdrew its troops from Deir Ezzor in the east to redeploy towards the centre.
In an interview published on Friday, HTS’s leader, Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, said the offensive was aimed at overthrowing Assad.
“When we talk about objectives, the goal of the revolution is to overthrow this regime. It is our right to use all available means to achieve that goal,” Zolani 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.
According to Fabrice Balanché, a lecturer at France’s Lumière Lyon 2 university, HTS now controls 20,000 square kilometers (more than 7,700 square miles) of territory, about seven times more than before the offensive began.
– sudden return –
As the army and its Iran-backed militia allies withdrew from Deir Ezzor in eastern Syria, Kurdish-led forces said they had crossed the Euphrates and taken control of the evacuated area.
The Observatory said government troops and their allies “suddenly” withdrew from the east and headed towards the oasis city of Palmyra on the desert road to Homs.
The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, backed by the United States, expressed readiness for talks with both Turkey and the rebels and said the offensive had ushered in a “new” political reality for Syria.
The rebels launched their offensive on the same day a ceasefire went into effect in the war between Israel and Hezbollah in neighboring Lebanon.
The Lebanese militant group has been a key ally of Assad along with Russia and Iran.
Turkey, which backs the opposition, said it would hold talks with Russia and Iran in Qatar this weekend.
Ahead of the talks, top diplomats from Iran, Iraq and Syria met in Baghdad, where Syria’s Bassam al-Sabbagh accused the government’s enemies of trying to “redraw the political map”.
Iran’s Abbas Araghchi promised to provide “whatever (support) is necessary” to Assad’s government.
– Fear –
In Homs, the scene of the war’s deadliest violence, thousands of members of Assad’s Alawite minority were fleeing for fear of rebel advances, residents and the Britain-based Observatory said.
Syrians who were forced out of the country years ago due to the initial crackdown on the rebellion were glued to their phones as they watched current developments.
“We have been dreaming of this for more than a decade,” said Yazan, a 39-year-old former worker who now lives in France.
Asked if he was concerned about HTS’s Islamist agenda, he said, “It doesn’t matter to me who’s running it. The devil himself could be behind it. What people care about is that Who will liberate the country?”
On the other side of the sectarian divide, Haider, 37, who lives in an Alawite-dominated neighborhood, told AFP by telephone that “fear is the umbrella that covers Homs now”.
The army opened fire on the advancing rebels as Syrian and Russian aircraft came under attack from the sky. The war monitor said at least 20 civilians, including five children, were killed in the bombing.
– ‘Big shock’ –
At least 826 people have been killed since the offensive began last week, mostly fighters but also 111 civilians, according to Observatory data, while the United Nations said the violence has displaced 280,000 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.
Hama resident Ghiyath Suleiman said, “Our happiness is indescribable, and we want every respectable Syrian to experience these moments of happiness that we have been deprived of since we were born.”
Online footage verified by AFP showed residents pulling down a statue of Assad’s father Hafez, under whose brutal rule the army carried out massacres in the city in the 1980s.
Aaron Lund, a fellow at the Century International think tank, called the Hama defeat “a huge blow to the Syrian government.”
Should Assad lose Homs, it would not mean the end of his rule, Lund said, but “with no safe route from Damascus to the coast, I would say it’s over as a credible state entity”. .
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
