Tens of thousands of people have fled Homs as the Syrian city appears to become the third captured by Islamist-led rebels, in another blow to President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.
Rebels, led by the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), stormed the nearby city of Hama yesterday after fierce fighting, and claimed to have taken its prison and freed prisoners.
Fearing that Homs will be the next city to fall, government forces have been fighting to secure it in recent hours, with one war observer reporting that airstrikes targeted a bridge on the road linking it to Hama.
“Fighter jets carried out several airstrikes, targeting the Al-Rastan Bridge on (the) Homs-Hama highway… as well as attacking positions around the bridge, attempting to cut the road between Hama and Homs and secure Homs,” reported the british government. stated the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
He added this morning that the rebels were just three miles from Homs on Friday, after taking control of two strategic towns, Rastan and Talbisseh, on the road linking it to Hama.
As the rebels advanced towards Homs, videos circulated showing queues of cars, supposedly people desperately trying to leave the city.
The UN has reported that approximately 120,000 refugees have already fled conflict zones in search of sanctuaries in the north since the conflict reignited, stoking fears it could trigger mass migration.
Lebanon, Syria’s neighbor, is already anticipating a significant influx of refugees, and there are concerns that a repeat of the migration crisis seen during the last war could emerge, with displaced Syrians seeking refuge in Europe along dangerous routes.
As rebels were reported to be attacking Homs, Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman reported a mass exodus from the city of members of Assad’s minority Alawite community.
Videos showing queues of cars have circulated on social networks. There have been reports of an exodus of people leaving Homs.
Tens of thousands of people are reportedly heading from Homs to areas along Syria’s Mediterranean coast.
A family is seen in Homs. It is the third largest city in Syria and is located just 40 kilometers (25 miles) south of Hama.
He said tens of thousands were heading toward areas along Syria’s Mediterranean coast, where Alawites, followers of a branch of Shiite Islam, form the majority.
Control of Homs could allow the rebels to “cut the main road leading to the Syrian coast”, a stronghold of the Alawite minority, the Observatory said.
“We are afraid and worried that what happened in Hama will be repeated in Homs,” said one official, who only identified himself as Abbas. We fear that they (the rebels) will take revenge on us,” said the 33-year-old.
Until last week, the war in Syria had been largely dormant for years, but analysts have said it was destined to resume as it was never truly resolved.
The rebels launched their offensive just over a week ago, just as a ceasefire was established in neighboring Lebanon between Israel and Hezbollah, an ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
To slow the rebel advance, the Observatory said Assad’s forces erected earthen barriers on the road north of Homs, Syria’s third-largest city, which lies just 40 kilometers (25 miles) south of Hama.
Tens of thousands of members of Assad’s minority Alawite community were fleeing Homs on Thursday for fear that the rebels would continue to advance, the Observatory previously said.
The rebels captured Hama on Thursday after street clashes with government forces and announced “the complete liberation of the city” in a message on their Telegram channel.
Rebel fighters hold weapons in front of the Hama governor’s building as they gather after Syrian rebels captured the city during their advance through northern Syria.
Rebel fighters kissed the ground and let loose volleys of celebratory gunfire as they entered Syria’s fourth-largest city.
Many residents came to greet the rebel fighters. An AFP photographer saw some residents set fire to a giant Assad poster placed on the facade of the town hall.
The army admitted to having lost control of the city, strategically located between Aleppo and Assad’s seat of power in Damascus.
Defense Minister Ali Abbas insisted the army’s withdrawal was a “temporary tactical measure.”
“Our forces are still nearby,” he said in a statement carried by the official SANA news agency.
A multi-barreled rocket launcher fires on regime forces on the northern outskirts of the city of Hama in west-central Syria on December 4, 2024.
Anti-government fighters rest in a position on the northern outskirts of the city of Hama in west-central Syria on December 4, 2024.
Aron Lund, a member of the think tank Century International, called the loss of Hama “a huge, huge blow to the Syrian government” because the military should have had a head start there to reverse rebel advances “and they couldn’t do that.” .
He said HTS will now try to advance towards Homs, where many residents were already leaving yesterday.
Early Thursday afternoon, the Syrian army admitted it had lost control of the strategically located city considered crucial in its efforts to protect the capital and seat of power, Damascus.
“In recent hours, with the intensification of clashes between our soldiers and terrorist groups… these groups managed to break a number of axes in the city and entered it,” the army said, adding that units had redeployed outside of the city. .
A Syrian Kurdish woman, fleeing northern Aleppo, leans against a bullet-riddled wall as she arrives in Tabqa, on the western outskirts of Raqa, on December 4, 2024.
The fall of Hama came despite bombing and strikes carried out by the Syrian and Russian air forces, state media reported late Wednesday.
Maya, a 22-year-old student who only gave her first name for security reasons, said she and her family were staying home while fighting raged outside.
“We constantly heard sounds of explosions and shelling,” he told AFP by phone from Hama. “We don’t know what’s going on outside.”
According to the Observatory, which draws on a network of sources in Syria, 826 people, mostly combatants but also 111 civilians, have been killed in the country since violence broke out last week.
This is the most intense fighting since 2020 in the civil war sparked by the repression of pro-democracy protests in 2011.
The key to the rebels’ success since the offensive began last week was the capture of Aleppo, which in more than a decade of war had never completely fallen from government hands.
While the advancing rebels encountered little resistance at the beginning of their offensive, the fighting around Hama has been especially fierce.
Armed groups opposing the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad took control of much of the city center of Aleppo in Syria on November 30, 2024.
An Arab newspaper estimated that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s fortune, much of it stolen from his own people, amounts to a staggering £13.5 billion.
Assad ordered a 50 percent increase in the salary of career soldiers, state news agency SANA reported Wednesday, as he seeks to bolster his forces for a counteroffensive.
The rebels pushed back the Syrian armed forces despite the government sending “large military convoys,” the Observatory said.
The rebels launched their offensive in northern Syria on November 27, the same day a ceasefire in the war between Israel and Hezbollah in neighboring Lebanon went into effect.
Both Hezbollah and Russia have been crucial supporters of the Assad government, but have been caught up in their own conflicts in recent years.
HTS has its roots in the Syrian branch of Al-Qaeda.
The group has tried to moderate its image in recent years, but experts say it faces the challenge of convincing Western governments that it has completely renounced hardline jihadism.
The United States maintains hundreds of troops in eastern Syria as part of a coalition formed against the jihadists of the Islamic State group.