Syrian insurgents have entered towns north of the country’s third largest city, Homs, sweeping along a highway that eventually leads to the capital, Damascus, in a lightning-fast advance that has shaken the Middle East.
Militants spearheaded by the group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) took control of the city of Hama on Thursday before moving south, swiftly capturing two key towns on the road south of the city before arriving in Al-Dar al-Kabera, a town five miles from the centre of Homs.
The Syrian government also lost control of the symbolic southern city of Deraa and most of the eponymous province, which was the cradle of the country’s 2011 uprising, according to rebel sources and the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights
Rebel fighters advanced into Deraa after reaching a deal to give army officials safe passage to the capital Damascus for the army’s orderly withdrawal.
The Russian embassy in Damascus instructed Russian nationals to leave Syria, in a rare show of alarm. Moscow has remained a key ally of Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, including providing military support.
Video from the opposition-aligned Aleppo Today channel showed airstrikes targeting Talbiseh on the road between Hama and Homs shortly after it was claimed by insurgents. The defence ministry in Damascus said Russian and Syrian military aircraft were responsible for airstrikes on the Hama countryside, while a strike attributed to forces from Moscow destroyed a bridge along the highway leading into Homs.
Speaking to reporters outside a mosque in Istanbul, the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, offered a message of support to the insurgency. He had previously offered to “discuss shaping the future of Syria”, together with Assad, he said, “but we received no response”.
“Idlib, Hama, Homs and after that most probably Damascus … we hope this march in Syria will continue without any issues,” he said. The foreign ministers of Turkey, Iran and Russia are expected to meet tomorrow on the sidelines of a forum in Doha for an urgent meeting on Syria.
The city of Homs sits at a key juncture close to the Lebanese border, connecting the road to Damascus with a highway to the coastal communities, Assad’s heartland and a site of Russian naval bases. Homs witnessed some of the fiercest fighting during earlier phases of Syria’s civil war over a decade ago, with rebel forces engaged in years-long street battles the army and allied Syrian militia forces, as well as the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.
Insurgents have called for the people of Homs to rise up against the regime, telling them “your time has come” in a message circulated online, as thousands fled south to Damascus or west to the coastal province of Latakia. Lebanese officials said they had closed all but one of their border crossings into Syria, while Jordan also closed its one crossing for passengers and people into Syrian territory.
Forces loyal to Damascus appeared to be in retreat across the country, with Assad increasingly losing his grip on major cities in Syria.
In the eastern provincial capital of Deir ez-Zor, Reuters and the Turkish state news agency Anadolu reported that a US-backed coalition of Kurdish and local Arab forces had taken control of the city after Syrian government forces and Iran-backed militias withdrew. Video showed the coalition, known as the Syrian Democratic Forces, driving military trucks through the centre of Deir ez-Zor.
The Deir ez-Zor military council, an Arab-majority militia that fights with the SDF, said their fighters had deployed in the city and west of the Euphrates river “in order to protect our people” from Islamic state fighters and Turkish-backed rebel forces active in the area.
Unrest also swept Suwayda province, which neighbours Deraa, with local media showing people climbing on top of tanks after Syrian army forces withdrew from a remote area north of the restive provincial capital.
Video from the city of Suwayda, a place where protests against Assad’s rule have increased in recent years, showed people striking a poster with the president’s face and taking control of a local police station.
Fighting to take Homs is expected to prove pivotal in the insurgents’ efforts to sweep south towards the capital. In little over a week their advance saw them rapidly take control of Aleppo, Syria’s second city, as well as full control of Hama after a rapid retreat by Syrian government forces. The unexpected advance marks the first time that both cities have been fully under opposition control since a popular uprising against Assad in 2011 then spilled over into a bloody civil war.
In a rare late-night address, the Syrian defence minister, Ali Mahmoud Abbas, called his forces withdrawal from Hama a “temporary tactical measure”, and said his forces had “deployed to save lives”.
The battle for Homs drew signs of further intervention from Damascus’s longtime allies, particularly Tehran and its proxy forces. Two senior Lebanese security sources told Reuters that Hezbollah had dispatched a small number of “supervising forces” to prevent the insurgents from seizing Homs. Israel said its forces stuck a border crossing between Lebanon and Syria on Friday, targeting what it said was a site used to transfer weapons to Hezbollah.
A senior Iranian official said “it is likely that Tehran will need to send military equipment, missiles and drones to Syria ... Tehran has taken all necessary steps to increase number of its military advisers in Syria and deploy forces”.
Tehran, which has been focussed on tensions with arch-foe Israel since the Gaza war began last year, began to evacuate its military officials and personnel from Syria on Friday, a sign of Iran’s inability to keep Assad in power, the New York Times reported, citing regional officials and three Iranian officials.
The Iranian foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, held talks with his Iraqi and Syrian counterparts in Baghdad, as Iraqi ministers feared the fighting in Syria could affect their country. While Iraq’s foreign minister promised aid and increased diplomatic efforts, and Araghchi expressed Iran’s “message of support for the Syrian government and people” in facing the insurgency, the ministers offered little beyond statements of support to Damascus.
The HTS leader known by his nom de guerre, Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, issued a message to the Iraqi prime minister, Mohammed Shia’ al-Sudani, pledging that the fighting in Syria “will not spill over into Iraq”, and urging al-Sudani’s government to “distance itself from the situation in Syria”.
Speaking to CNN, al-Jolani said the insurgents’ aim remains to topple the Assad regime in Damascus.
“When we talk about objectives, the goal of the revolution remains the overthrow of this regime. It is our right to use all available means to achieve that goal,” he said.
