Islamist-led rebels captured the central Syrian city of Hama on Thursday, dealing a new blow to President Bashar al-Assad’s forces, days after losing the country’s commercial hub Aleppo.
Rebels led by the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) launched their offensive a little more than a week ago, coinciding with a ceasefire between Israel and Assad’s ally Hezbollah in neighboring Lebanon.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor, said that after overnight clashes, rebels attacked Hama “from multiple sides” and engaged in street fighting with Assad’s forces.
The rebels later announced “the complete liberation of Hama city” in a message on their Telegram channel.
Rebel fighters kissed the ground and opened fire in celebration as they entered Syria’s fourth-largest city.
Many residents turned out to welcome the rebel fighters. An AFP photographer saw some residents set fire to a huge poster of Assad in front of city hall.
The army acknowledged losing control of the city strategically located between Aleppo and Assad’s seat of power in Damascus.
Defense Minister Ali Abbas stressed that the troop withdrawal was a “temporary strategic measure”.
“Our forces are still in the vicinity,” he said in a statement carried by the official SANA news agency.
– ‘Big shock’ –
Aaron Lund, a fellow at the Century International think tank, called the Hama defeat “a huge blow to the Syrian government” because the army should have had an advantage there to reverse the rebels’ gains “and they couldn’t do it”.
He said HTS would now try to advance toward Syria’s third-largest city, Homs, about 40 kilometers (25 miles) south, where many residents were already leaving on Thursday, according to images on social media. Found out.
Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman reported a mass exodus from the city by members of Assad’s Alawite minority community.
He said thousands of people were headed to areas along Syria’s Mediterranean coast, where Alawites, followers of a branch of Shia Islam, are in the majority.
“We are scared and worried that what happened in Hama will be repeated in Homs,” said a civil servant, who gave his name only as Abbas.
“We fear they (rebels) will take revenge on us,” the 33-year-old said.
Until last week, the war in Syria had been mostly dormant for years, but analysts have said it was certain to restart because it had never really been resolved.
UN chief Antonio Guterres said the flare-up reflected “the bitter fruits of the chronic collective failure of previous de-escalation arrangements”.
In a video posted online, HTS leader Abu Mohammed al-Jolani said his fighters had entered Hama to “cleanse the wound that has existed in Syria for 40 years”, referring to the crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood in 1982. Due to which thousands of people were killed. Deaths.
He said, “I pray to Almighty God that this will be a victory without any revenge.”
In a subsequent message on Telegram congratulating “the people of Hama on their victory”, he used his real name, Ahmed al-Shara, rather than his alias de guerre for the first time.
– Fierce battle –
The Observatory said 826 people have been killed in Syria since violence erupted last week, mostly fighters but also 111 civilians.
It marks the most intense fighting since 2020 in the civil war sparked by the repression of pro-democracy protests in 2011.
Key to the rebels’ successes since the offensive began last week was the capture of Aleppo, which had never completely fallen from government hands in more than a decade of war.
Although the advancing rebels initially encountered little resistance in their offensive, the fighting around Hama has been particularly fierce.
The Observatory said 222 people had been killed in Hama province since Tuesday evening, four of whom were civilians.
State news agency SANA reported on Wednesday that Assad ordered a 50 percent pay raise for career soldiers as he seeks to strengthen his army for a counteroffensive.
The Observatory said rebels drove back Syrian armed forces despite the government sending “large military convoys”.
Risk of ‘abuse’
Rebels launched their offensive into northern Syria on November 27, the same day a ceasefire in the war between Israel and Hezbollah in neighboring Lebanon took effect.
Both Hezbollah and Russia have been important supporters of the Assad government, but in recent years they have become embroiled in their own conflicts.
Hezbollah leader Naim Qassim said on Thursday that his group’s fighters “will be on Syria’s side in thwarting the goals of this aggression as much as possible”.
Human Rights Watch warned that the fighting “raises concerns that civilians face real risk of serious abuses at the hands of opposition armed groups and the Syrian government”.
HTS is rooted in Syria’s al-Qaeda branch.
The group has tried to soften its image in recent years, but experts say it faces a challenge in convincing Western governments that it has fully abandoned radical jihadism.
The United States has deployed hundreds of troops to eastern Syria as part of a coalition against jihadists from the Islamic State group.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
