Regime withdraws as Syrian opposition captures key city of Hama

HAMA

Syrian anti-regime forces ousted pro-government troops from Hama on Dec. 5, bringing opposition groups a major new victory after a lightning advance across northern Syria and dealing a new blow to President Bashar al-Assad and his Russian and Iranian allies.

The Syrian army announced that the rebels had entered Hama after intense clashes and said it was redeploying outside the city "to preserve civilians’ lives and prevent urban combat.”

The announcement on Thursday came hours after the anti-regime forces led by the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) stormed the city and were marching toward the center.

The group seized its prison and released inmates following the capture of the key city.

Strategically located in central Syria, Hama is crucial for the army’s efforts to protect the capital, Damascus.

The city lies more than a third of the way from Aleppo to Damascus and its capture would open the road to a rebel advance on Homs, the central city that functions as a main crossroads connecting Syria’s most populous regions.

The anti-regime fighters surrounded the city from three sides following violent clashes with the Assad troops which are left only one exit towards Homs to south, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

“If Hama falls, it means that the beginning of the regime’s fall has started,” the Observatory’s chief, Rami Abdurrahman, told The Associated Press before the capture.

On Nov. 27, a coalition of armed forces launched a lightning offensive in Syria’s northwest, which had been relatively calm since 2020.

The Observatory said that 704 people, mostly combatants but also 110 civilians, have been killed in Syria since the violence erupted last week.

The head of HTS, Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, on Dec. 4 visited Aleppo’s landmark citadel.

Jolani was seen waving to supporters from an open-top car as he visited the historic fortress, in images posted on the rebels’ Telegram channel.

Hama has stayed in government hands throughout the civil war, which erupted in 2011 as a rebellion against Assad. Its fall to a revived insurgency would send shockwaves through Damascus and its Russian and Iranian allies.

In a bid to encourage soldiers, Assad ordered a 50-percent raise in career soldiers’ pay as he seeks to bolster his forces for the
counteroffensive.

The latest flare-up in Syria’s long civil war comes as Assad’s main regional and international backers, Russia, Iran and Hezbollah, are preoccupied with their own wars.

The United Nations on Dec. 4 said 115,000 people had been “newly displaced across Idlib and northern Aleppo” by the fighting.