Syrian opposition fighters have pushed back government forces in a surprise offensive and have rapidly expanded the territory under their control in the northwest of the country.
Syrian insurgents entered the city of Al-Qaeda on Thursday. Hama, in the centre of the country, after days of intense clashes with government forces, as they press ahead with their week-long offensive that has brought large parts of Syria under their control.
The Syrian army said it withdrew from Hama after insurgents breached its defenses, dealing another setback to the president. Bashar Al Assad, days after losing Aleppo, the country's largest city. The Syrian army said it had withdrawn from Hama and taken up positions outside the city to protect civilian lives.
The next target of the insurgents is probably the city of Homs, in the center of the country, the third largest in the country. Homs, which is located about 40 kilometers south of Hama, is the gateway to the capital Damascus, the seat of Assad's power and the coastal region that is a support base for him.
Abu Mohammed al-Julani, the de facto leader of the Syrian insurgency, announced in a video message that the insurgency reached the city of Hama in a “a conquest that is not vengeful, but of mercy and compassion".
The capture of Hama, Syria's fourth-largest city, is another blow to Assad days after insurgents captured much of the northern city of Aleppo, the largest in the country.
Al-Golani is the leader of Syria's most powerful insurgent group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (Levant Liberation Organization, HTS), which long served as a Al Qaeda branch in Syria and is considered a terrorist group by the UN, as well as by countries such as the United States.
On Wednesday he publicly toured the city of Aleppo and on Thursday he spoke about Hama from an undisclosed location in what appears to be a video shot on a cell phone.
On Thursday morning, Syrian insurgents said that They had entered Hama after three days of intense fighting. with government forces on the outskirts, part of an ongoing offensive.
The Syrian army said in a statement later that Several soldiers died after resisting the insurgents for days. He accused the attackers of resorting to suicide attacks to breach the city's defences.
El Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a British-based opposition group that monitors the war, said that after fierce battles within Hama, Opposition gunmen now control the police headquarters in the city, as well as the sprawling air base and central prison from where hundreds of detainees were released.
“If Hama falls, it means that the beginning of the regime’s downfall has begun”, Observatory head Rami Abdurrahman told the news agency AP before the capture of the city.
Hama It is one of the few cities that remained under full government control during the Syrian conflict, which broke out in March 2011 following a popular uprising. The capture of Aleppo was a major setback for Assad.
The insurgents claimed on Thursday in their Military Operations Department channel on the Telegram app that they had entered Hama and were marching toward its center.
“Our holy warriors are waging fierce battles in Hama neighborhoods with the forces of the criminal regime,” the channel quoted a local commander identified as Major Hassan Abdul-Ghani as saying.
Hama is an important intersection point in Syria that It connects the center of that country with the north, as well as with the east and the west. It is about 200 kilometers north of the capital, Damasco, the seat of Assad's power. Hama province also borders the coastal province of Latakia, a main base of popular support for Assad.
The name of the city is known for the Hama massacre of 1982, one of the most notorious in the modern Middle East, when security forces under the command of Assad's late father, Hafez Assad, killed thousands of people to crush a Muslim Brotherhood uprising.
The offensive is led by the jihadist group HTS, as well as by an umbrella group of Syrian militias backed by Türkiye, LLAMADA Syrian National Army. His sudden capture of the northern city of Aleppo, a former trading hub, was a surprise prize for Assad's opponents and reignited a conflict that had been largely stagnant for the past few years.
The capture of Aleppo marked the first opposition attack on the city since 2016, when a brutal Russian air campaign recaptured it for Assad after rebel forces had initially taken it. The intervention of Russia, Iran y Hezbollah, ally of Iran, and other militant groups have allowed Assad to remain in power.
The latest flare-up in Syria's long-running civil war comes at a time when Assad's main regional and international supporters, Russia e IranAre worried about their own wars.
Tens of thousands of people have been displaced by renewed fighting, which began with a surprise opposition offensive on November 27.