Islamist rebels have seized the Syrian city of Hama in a battle to seize a vital post on the road to Damascus, marking the latest challenge to Bashar al-Assad’s control of the country.
Militants led by the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) group entered the city from the east on Thursday after encircling it during five days of fighting with forces loyal to Assad.
A video circulating online suggests rebels have seized a military airport outside Hama and freed prisoners held in a dreaded state detention center.
As night fell, extremists said they had “fully established control over the city of Hama” and called on the city’s police and militias to flee.
“This victory will be without revenge and it will be merciful,” HTS leader Abu Mohammed al-Jolani said in a message to the people of Hama.
Syria’s defense ministry initially denied that rebels had entered Hama, calling its defense lines “impregnable”. But as the fighting intensified and approached the center of the city, the Syrian army said it had withdrawn, redeploying its forces “to preserve civilian lives and not drag the people of Hama city into these battles.”
Located on a highway that runs down western Syria towards the capital Damascus, Hama was the site of mass uprisings against Assad in 2011. and then fierce fighting as opposition forces tried and failed to take control of the city in the ensuing civil war.
So is Hama the site of the infamous 1982 massacrewhen forces loyal to former President Hafez al-Assad besieged the city to prevent an uprising led by Sunni Muslims opposed to his rule.
The large-scale HTS-led offensive saw Assad lose control of Syria’s second-largest city, Aleppo, and parts of the country’s northwest. The UN’s World Food Program said the escalation had displaced more than 280,000 people, “adding to years of suffering”.
The rise in violence has led to fears of an aid crisis, with UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres speaking of an urgent need for citizens to access immediate humanitarian support and Aleppo’s parish priest, Father Bahjat Karakac, expressing fears that the bombing scare is giving way to “danger of starvation” amid a spike in food prices.
Guterres called for a UN-backed political process to end the bloodshed,
asking “all those with influence to do their part for the long-suffering people” of Syria and noting that all countries have a duty to protect civilians.
On Friday, Iraqi Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein will meet his Syrian and Iranian counterparts in Baghdad to discuss the situation in Syria, the Iraqi state news agency reported. The move comes days after urgent negotiations were held in Ankara.
Some Iraqi fighters entered Syria early this week to support Assad, Iraqi and Syrian sources told Reuters. Iraq’s Iran-linked Hashd al-Shaabi paramilitary coalition is mobilizing along the Syrian border, saying it is purely pre-emptive in the event of a spread into Iraq.
Tens of thousands of members of Assad’s minority Alawite community fled Syria’s third city of Homs on Thursday, fearing Islamist-led rebels would continue their advance, a military monitor said. Homs is located just 40 km (25 mi) south of Hama.
Britain-based war monitor the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported “a mass exodus of Alawites from Homs neighborhoods, with tens of thousands heading to the Syrian coast, fearing a rebel advance.”
Khaled, who lives on the outskirts of the city, told Agence France-Presse that “the road leading to [coastal] The province of Tartus was aglow… due to the lights of hundreds of cars leaving”.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan told Guterres in a phone call that the conflict in Syria had reached a “new phase.” “The Syrian regime at this stage must urgently engage with its own people for a comprehensive political solution,” he said.
The sudden losses appear to have upset Assad’s longtime supporters in Moscow and Tehran Russian forces exhausted by their invasion of Ukraine and Iran, concerned that its forces are being targeted by Israeli airstrikes on Syrian territory, which have increased over the past year.
Naim Qassem, the head of Iran’s proxy Hezbollah in Lebanon, which is fighting in support of Assad, pledged to “stand by Syria to thwart aggression against it.”
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that Moscow was “closely following” developments in Syria. “Depending on the assessment of the situation, we will be able to talk about the degree of assistance that the Syrian authorities need to deal with the extremists and eliminate this threat,” he said.
Gregory Waters, a Syrian military analyst at the Middle East Institute, said a combination of low morale, low pay, corruption and dysfunction within the chain of command contributed to the sudden rout of government forces from areas they had controlled for years.
The Syrian army, he said, was “totally unprepared” for the rebel offensive.
Amid reports of rising desertions from the Syrian army, or fighters fleeing their positions, Assad issued a decree raising the salaries of military personnel by 50 percent earlier this week. The Syrian president appeared to be trying to mount a counter-offensive as the battle closed in on the capital.
Military support from Iran and Russia has been limited compared to previous iterations of the Syrian conflict, Waters said.
“I think it’s hard to see a scenario where forces loyal to the regime in Damascus can regain momentum,” he said. “Even if the Russians and Iranian or Iranian-backed forces get more involved, they are still limited by their own wars. We feel unlikely to reach the level of support we have seen before.”
