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Syrian rebel forces on Friday said they reached Homs, Syria’s third-largest city and home to a large population belonging to President Bashar al-Assad’s Alawite sect. While the claim could not be independently verified, the latest rebel advance triggered a mass exodus of people fleeing the central Syrian city.
Thousands of people fled the central Syrian city of Homs, the country’s third largest, as insurgents seized two towns on the outskirts Friday, positioning themselves for an assault on a potentially major prize in their march against President Bashar Assad.
The move, reported by pro-government media and an opposition war monitor, was the latest in the stunning advances by opposition fighters over the past week that have so far met little resistance from Assad’s forces. A day earlier, fighters captured the central city of Hama, Syria’s fourth largest, after the army said it withdrew to avoid fighting inside the city and spare the lives of civilians.
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The insurgents, led by the jihadi Hayat Tahrir al-Sham group, or HTS, have vowed to march to Homs and the capital, Damascus, Assad’s seat of power. Videos circulating online showed a highway jammed with cars full of people fleeing Homs, a city with a large population belonging to Assad’s Alawite sect, seen as his core supporters.
If Assad’s military loses Homs, it could be a crippling blow. The city, parts of which were controlled by insurgents until 2014, stands at an important intersection between Damascus and Syria’s coastal provinces of Latakia and Tartus, where Assad enjoys wide support. Homs province is Syria’s largest in size and borders Lebanon, Iraq and Jordan.
Kurds’ dream of self-rule under threat as Turkish-backed forces sweep across Syria
Opposition protesters stormed security posts and army positions in the southern province of Sweida, opposition activists said. U.S.-backed Kurdish forces who control eastern and northeastern Syria began to encroach on government-held territory.
After years of largely being bottled up in a northwest corner of the country, the insurgents burst out a week ago, captured the northern city of Aleppo, Syria’s largest, and have kept advancing since. Government troops have repeatedly fallen back.
The sudden offensive has flipped the tables on a long-entrenched stalemate in Syria’s nearly 14-year-old civil war. Along with HTS, the fighters include forces of an umbrella group of Turkish-backed Syrian militias called the Syrian National Army. Turkey has denied backing the offensive, though experts say insurgents would not have launched it without the country’s consent.
HTS’s leader, Abu Mohammad al-Golani, told CNN in an exclusive interview Thursday from Syria that Assad’s government was on the path to falling, propped up only by Russia and Iran.
