Thousands flee Syria’s Homs as opposition forces advance on key city

Opposition forces have captured the city of Hama in central Syria, the latest victory for the rebels since they launched a lightning offensive eight days ago and a major blow to President Bashar al-Assad.

The Syrian army said opposition forces entered Hama on Thursday after intense fighting, prompting its units to withdraw from the city.

The army said in a statement it was redeploying its forces “to preserve civilian lives and prevent urban combat” after intense clashes.

Abu Mohammed al-Julani, the leader of the most powerful opposition armed group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a former al-Qaeda affiliate, declared that opposition forces had full control over Hama.

Al Jazeera’s Resul Serdar said the taking of Hama was a “major development”.

“In just over a week, they have managed to take full control of Syria’s second-largest city, Aleppo, and now the fourth-largest city,” Serdar said, reporting from the Turkish city of Kilis, on the border with Syria.The opposition also took over the city’s military airport, Serdar said, “one of the largest in Syria” that has been used by government forces to launch strikes against rebels.

“Today, they managed to breach the regime’s front lines and get into the city from the eastern part,” Serdar said, adding that a “significant” number of residents in Hama fled the city.

Beginning last Wednesday, opposition groups led by HTS pushed south from areas under their control in northwest Syria, capturing Aleppo over the weekend before reaching a strategic hill just north of Hama on Tuesday and advancing towards the city’s east and west flanks.

The rapid collapse of Syrian government control in the north appears to reveal a shift in the balance of power since the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah, a lynchpin of al-Assad’s battlefield force, suffered heavy losses in its war with Israel.

Al-Assad relied heavily on Russian and Iranian backing throughout the most intense years of Syria’s more-than-13-year war, with allied forces helping him to claw back most territory and the biggest cities before the front lines froze in 2020 with a ceasefire.

But Russia has been focused on its war in Ukraine since 2022, while many senior leaders in Hezbollah, the most powerful Iran-aligned force, were killed in Israeli attacks in recent months.

In a video statement, al-Julani warned against any involvement by another Iran-aligned force – Iraq’s Hashd al-Shaabi paramilitary coalition.

Some Iraqi fighters entered Syria early this week to support Assad, Iraqi and Syrian sources said. The Hashd al-Shaabi has mobilised along the border with Syria saying this was purely preventative in case of spillover into Iraq.