Syrian rebels enter suburbs of key city of Homs, sources say

Fighting had raged around the north of strategically vital Homs since late on Friday with government forces using intense airstrikes to hammer the rebels

Published: Sat 7 Dec 2024, 7:54 PM

By
Reuters

Rebel fighters at Homs countryside, Syria. Photo: Reuters

Syrian rebels entered suburbs of the key city of Homs on Saturday, sources said, pressing a lightning week-long advance as front lines collapse across the country and government forces battle to save President Bashar al-Assad's 24-year rule.

A Homs resident as well as army and rebel sources said the insurgents had breached government defences from the north and east of the city. The Syrian military did not immediately comment on the reports.

Fighting had raged around the north of strategically vital Homs since late on Friday with government forces reinforcing and using intense airstrikes to hammer the rebels.

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Insurgents also seized almost the entire southwest within 24 hours and advanced to within 30km (20 miles) of Damascus as government forces fell back to more defensible positions, rebels said.

Underscoring the possibility of a renewed uprising in the capital itself, protesters in a Damascus suburb tore down a statue of Assad's father, residents said, with video showing them tearing it to pieces.

Assad remains in Damascus, Syria's state news agency said.

Since the rebels' sweep into Aleppo a week ago, government defences have crumbled at dizzying speed as insurgents seized a string of major cities and rose up in places where the rebellion had long seemed over.

Besides capturing Aleppo in the north, Hama in the centre and Deir al-Zor in the east, rebels said they have taken southern Quneitra, Deraa and Suweida.

The twin threats to strategically vital Homs and the capital Damascus now pose an existential threat to Assad's decades of rule in Syria and the continued influence there of his main regional backer Iran.

The pace of events has stunned Arab capitals and raised fears of a new wave of regional instability.

Syria's civil war, which erupted in 2011 as an uprising against Assad's rule, dragged in big outside powers, created space for militants to plot attacks around the world and sent millions of refugees into neighbouring states.

Assad had long relied on allies to subdue the rebels, with bombing by Russian warplanes while Iran sent allied forces including Lebanon's Hezbollah and Iraqi militia to bolster the Syrian military and storm insurgent strongholds.

But Russia has been focused on the war in Ukraine since 2022 and Hezbollah has suffered big losses in its own gruelling war with Israel, significantly limiting its ability or that of Iran to bolster Assad.

Syria's territorial integrity

The foreign ministers of Russia, Iran and the main rebels' backer Turkey met on Saturday and agreed on the importance of Syria's territorial integrity and on restarting a political process, they said.

But there was no indication they agreed on any concrete steps, with the situation inside Syria changing by the hour.

Russia has a naval base and airbase in Syria that have not only been important for its support of Assad, but also for its ability to project influence in the Mediterranean and Africa.

Moscow has been supporting government forces with intense air strikes but it was not clear if it could easily step up this campaign.

Iran has said it would consider sending forces to Syria, but any immediate extra assistance would likely depend on Hezbollah and Iraqi militias.

The Lebanese group sent some "supervising forces" to Homs on Friday but any significant deployment would risk exposure to Israeli airstrikes, Western officials said.

Iran-backed Iraqi militias are on high alert, with thousands of heavily armed fighters ready to deploy to Syria, many of them amassed near the border. Iraq does not seek military intervention in Syria, a government spokesman said on Friday.

A top Iranian official, Ali Larijani, met Assad in Damascus on Friday, an Iranian news agency reported a lawmaker as saying. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said "no specific decisions have been made regarding a horizon for Syria's future".

Battle for Homs

The Homs resident said he had seen the rebels advance past a Syrian Air Force base in the north of the city that was considered a major defensive area.

An opposition figure in touch with rebel command and a Syrian army source both also said the insurgents were inside the city.

Airstrikes had pummelled rebel positions north of Homs after the insurgents reached the city outskirts late on Friday, both sides said.

Seizing Homs, an important crossroads between the capital and the Mediterranean, would cut off Damascus from the coastal stronghold of Assad's minority Alawite sect, and from Russia's air and naval base.

"Homs is the key. It will be very hard for Assad to make a stand but if Homs should fall, the main highway from Damascus to Tartus and the coast will be closed, cutting the capital off from the Alawite Mountains," said Jonathan Landis, a Syria specialist at the University of Oklahoma.

In the south, the fall of Deraa and Suweida on Friday, followed by Quneitra on Saturday, could allow a concerted assault on the capital, the seat of Assad's power.

The Syrian military pulled back as far as Saasa 30 km (20 miles) from Damascus to regroup, a Syrian army officer said. Jarmana, where protesters pulled down a statue of Hafez al-Assad, the current president's father, is in the city's southern suburbs.

Deraa, which had a population of more than 100,000 before the civil war began, holds symbolic importance as the cradle of the uprising. It is the capital of a province of about one million people, bordering Jordan.

In the east, a US-backed alliance led by Syrian Kurdish fighters captured Deir el-Zor, the government's main foothold in the vast desert, on Friday, three Syrian sources told Reuters, jeopardising Assad's land connection to allies in Iraq.

In a sign of government forces' collapse in the east, around 2,000 Syrian soldiers crossed the border into Iraq to seek sanctuary, the mayor of Iraqi border town al-Qaem said.

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