Syrian rebels say they are closing in on the strategic city of Homs as they push ahead with a lightning advance southwards towards President Bashar al-Assad’s remaining strongholds.
“Our forces have liberated the last village on the outskirts of Homs city and are now at its walls,” the rebels said late on Friday evening via their Telegram channel.
Homs is the largest city still controlled by Assad’s regime on the highway that leads south to the capital Damascus. The rebels, led by Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, have already captured Aleppo, Syria’s second city, and Hama, since launching their offensive 11 days ago.
The assault poses the most serious threat to Assad’s rule in a decade, reigniting a 13-year civil war that had been largely frozen since 2020.
State media said that joint Syrian and Russian forces had shelled rebel forces in Homs’s northern suburbs.
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Although much of the rebels’ advance has been met with little resistance by forces loyal to Assad, there are signs that the fighting may be more intense around Homs.
If the government were to lose Homs, analysts said, it would cut off Damascus from Assad’s other big support base in the coastal Latakia and Tartus governorates. Assad comes from the minority Alawite sect, whose population is concentrated on the coast.
The area is also crucial to Russia, which intervened in Syria’s war in 2015 to support Assad, giving Moscow access to the Mediterranean.
HTS, which is supported by Turkish-backed factions, has taken advantage of Assad’s supporters Iran, Iranian-backed Lebanese movement Hizbollah and Russia being weakened and distracted by other conflicts.
Russian jets have responded to the rebels’ advance with air strikes but in a sign of the crisis’ severity, Moscow warned its citizens on Friday to flee Syria. On Saturday, the New York Times reported that Iranian military commanders were being evacuated.
Iran’s foreign ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei told the state news agency IRNA that its embassy in Damascus had not been evacuated. “The embassy of the Islamic republic of Iran continues its activities as usual,” he said.
Homs is close to the Syrian-Lebanese border, where Hizbollah has a large presence. Iran and Hizbollah’s support of Assad a decade ago helped shore up the dictator’s rule, but a year of war with Israel has left it weakened.
Local media reported roads were jammed with people fleeing the offensive, and HTS issued a statement addressed to the Lebanese asking them not to get drawn into the conflict.
Only one border crossing remained open between Lebanon and Syria, on the Beirut-Damascus road, after Lebanese security forces on Friday closed other entry points, citing “repeated Israeli attacks targeting land border crossings”.
The Israeli military has repeatedly targeted the crossings, and said it had struck sites close to the border on Thursday night, as it aims to cut off Hizbollah’s resupply routes from Syria.
In Deraa, the birthplace of the Syrian revolution in 2011, Reuters reported that the rebels had reached an agreement with regime forces to withdraw. HTS said Deraa had been “liberated from the grip of the criminal regime and its militias”.
Several towns near the Jordanian border have also been claimed by opposition factions, with minimal fighting.
State media downplayed the rapid realignment of the south, saying the army was repositioning and establishing a “security cordon” after “terrorist elements attacked the army’s scattered checkpoints with the aim of distracting our armed forces”.
But Assad has also lost ground in eastern Syria, where US-backed Kurdish fighters have taken control of Deir Ezzor city, the capital of the oil-rich province. The area was where jihadist militants Isis had been at their most expansive in Syria.
Additional reporting from Najmeh Bozorgmehr in Tehran
