Anti-government fighters prepare a multi-barrel rocket launcher before firing against regime forces, in the northern outskirts of Syria’s west-central city of Hama on December 4, 2024. – Syrian government forces pressed a counterattack against Islamist-led rebels around the key city of Hama on December 4 after suffering a string of staggering losses further north, a war monitor said.
| Photo Credit: AFP

The Syrian army has withdrawn from the central city of Hama after insurgents broke through its defenses, the military said on Thursday (December 5, 2024), in another setback for President Bashar Assad.

The announcement came hours after opposition fighters said they had entered the city and were marching toward the center.

The Syrian army said it redeployed from Hama and took positions outside the city to protect the lives of civilians.

Insurgents captured larger part of Aleppo

The capture of Hama, Syria’s fourth largest city, is another blow for Assad days after insurgents captured much of the northern city of Aleppo, the country’s largest city.

On Thursday morning, Syrian insurgents said they entered Hama after three days of intense clashes with government forces on its outskirts, part of an ongoing offensive.

The Syrian army said in a statement later that a number of troops were killed after resisting the insurgents for days. It accused the attackers of relying on suicide attacks to break through the defenses of the city.

Hama is one of the few cities that remained under full government control during Syria’s conflict, which broke out in March 2011 following a popular uprising. Its capture would be a major setback for President Bashar Assad.

The offensive is being led by the jihadi group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham as well as an umbrella group of Turkish-backed Syrian militias called the Syrian National Army. Their sudden capture of the northern city of Aleppo, an ancient business hub, was a stunning prize for Assad’s opponents and reignited the conflict which had been largely stalemated for the past few years.

Next target likely to be Homs

The next target of the insurgents is likely to be the central city of Homs, the country’s third largest. Homs is about 40 kilometers (25 miles) south of Hama.

Aleppo’s takeover marked the first opposition attack on the city since 2016, when a brutal Russian air campaign retook it for Assad after rebel forces had initially seized it. Intervention by Russia, Iran and Iranian-allied Hezbollah and other militant groups has allowed Assad to remain in power.

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

Tens of thousands of people have been displaced by the renewed fighting, which began with the surprise opposition offensive Nov. 27.

The insurgents claimed on their Military Operations Department channel on the Telegram app Thursday that they have entered Hama and are marching toward its center.

“Our forces are taking positions inside the city of Hama,” the channel quoted a local commander identified as Maj. Hassan Abdul-Ghani as saying.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition war monitor, said fierce battles were fought inside Hama.

“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 city’s capture.

Hama is a major intersection point in Syria that links that country’s center with the north as well the east and the west. It is about 200 kilometers (125 miles) north of the capital, Damascus, Assad’s seat of power. Hama province also borders the coastal province of Latakia, a main base of popular support for Assad.

The city’s name is known for the 1982 massacre of Hama, one of the most notorious in the modern Middle East, when security forces under Assad’s late father, Hafez Assad, killed thousands to crush a Muslim Brotherhood uprising.

Government forces lost control of Syria’s second city Aleppo on Sunday (December 1, 2024) for the first time since the country’s civil conflict began, a war monitor said, after a lightning offensive dealt a severe blow to President Bashar al-Assad.

An Islamist-dominated rebel alliance launched its assault on forces of the Iranian- and Russian-backed government on Wednesday, the same day a fragile ceasefire took effect in neighbouring Lebanon between Israel and the Iran-backed Hezbollah after two months of all-out war.

The jihadist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) group and allied factions now “control Aleppo city, except the neighbourhoods controlled by the Kurdish forces”, Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, told AFP.

For the first time since the civil war started more than a decade ago, “Aleppo city is out of control of Syrian regime forces”, he said.

The Observatory said Syrian and Russian aircraft staged deadly strikes on Sunday (December 1, 2024) in support of the government.

It said at least 12 people were killed in the city, raising an earlier toll of five from attacks targeting the area near Aleppo university.

Russian strikes also killed eight civilians, including two children and a woman, in the rebel bastion of Idlib, the Observatory said.

Idlib resident Umm Mohamed said she lost her daughter-in-law, who left behind five children, including a wounded little girl.

“We were sitting in the room and suddenly we heard the sound of an explosion, the walls fell on us,” she told AFP from hospital.

“From the dust, no one could see the others… I was with my son’s five children. Thank God their injuries were minor.”

In 2016 the Syrian army — supported by Russian air power — recaptured rebel-held areas of Aleppo, a city dominated by its landmark citadel.

Damascus also relied on Hezbollah fighters to regain swathes of Syria lost to rebels early in the war, which began in 2011 when the government crushed protests. But Hezbollah has taken heavy losses in its fight with Israel.

Rebel advances met little resistance

Several northern districts inside Aleppo are predominantly inhabited by Syrian Kurds under authority of the People’s Protection Units (YPG), the main component of the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).

Before this offensive, HTS, led by Al-Qaeda’s former Syria branch, already controlled swathes of the Idlib region, the last major rebel bastion in the northwest.

HTS also held parts of the neighbouring Aleppo, Hama and Latakia provinces.

The latest fighting has killed more than 370 people, mostly combatants but also including at least 48 civilians, according to the Observatory, which has a network of sources inside Syria.

The Observatory said rebel advances met little resistance.

It said Sunday the army strengthened its positions around Syria’s fourth largest city Hama, about 230 kilometres (140 miles) south of Aleppo, and sent reinforcements to the north of the surrounding province.

Also read: A brief history of the Aleppo battle

Syria’s defence ministry said units in Hama province “reinforced their defensive lines with diverse means of fire, equipment and personnel”.

Rebels have taken dozens of towns across the north, including Khan Sheikhun and Maaret al-Numan, roughly halfway between Aleppo and Hama, the Observatory said.

‘Weak’ government

In Idlib on Sunday, bodies lay in a hospital and vehicles were torched in the street, AFP images showed, after what the Observatory said were Russian air strikes.

In Aleppo, an AFP photographer saw charred vehicles. Inside one car, a woman’s body lay slumped in the back seat, a handbag beside her.

The Russian air strikes on parts of Aleppo are the first since 2016.

One resident, who asked not to be identified due to safety concerns, told AFP that like most locals, “we are holed up at home”.

The rebels “are trying to put on a kind face and reassure the population. They forced the bakeries to work through the night, and distributed free bread at intersections today”, the resident added.

Aaron Stein, president of the US-based Foreign Policy Research Institute, said “Russia’s presence has thinned out considerably and quick reaction air strikes have limited utility”.

He called the rebel advance “a reminder of how weak the regime is”.

Aron Lund of the Century International think tank said “Aleppo seems to be lost for the regime… and a government without Aleppo is not really a functional government of Syria”.

Syria’s “reliance on Russia and Iran”, along with its refusal to move forward with a 2015 peace process outlined by the UN Security Council, “created the conditions now unfolding”, said US National Security Council spokesman Sean Savett.

The United States maintains hundreds of troops in northeast Syria as part of an anti-jihadist coalition.

Israel monitoring situation in Syria

Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi left Tehran for Damascus to deliver what state media said would be a message of support for Assad.

Araghchi again called the rebel offensive a US and Israeli plot, and vowed that “the Syrian army will once again win”.

Assad vowed to defeat the “terrorists”, however big their attacks.

“Terrorism only understands the language of force, and that is the language which we will break it and eliminate it with, whoever its supporters and sponsors are,” he said.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said: “We are constantly monitoring what is happening in Syria.”

Russia, whose air support was previously decisive in helping Syria’s government win back lost territory, joined Iran in expressing “extreme concern” over their ally’s losses.

UN envoy Geir Pedersen said the “latest developments pose severe risks to civilians and have serious implications for regional and international peace and security”.

Jordan’s King Abdullah II expressed support for Syria’s “territorial integrity, sovereignty and stability”, and Pope Francis urged a prayer “for Syria, where war has unfortunately reignited, resulting in many victims”.

Opposition forces take control of areas outside Aleppo, Syria, on Friday (November 29, 2024).
| Photo Credit: AP

Syrian government troops battled insurgents inside the country’s largest city, Aleppo, for the first time since 2016, while warplanes targeted rebel supply lines on the city’s edge, state media reported Saturday (November 30, 2024).

Insurgents broke through government defense lines in Aleppo on Friday (November 29, 2024) and entered the city’s western neighborhood with little resistance. The insurgents launched their shock offensive in Aleppo and Idlib countryside on Wednesday (November 27, 2024) and wrestled control of dozens of villages and towns along the way, including a strategic town south of Aleppo.

The pro-government Al-Watan newspaper reported airstrikes on the edge of Aleppo city, targeting rebel supply lines. It posted a video of a missile landing on a gathering of fighters and vehicles, in a street lined with trees and buildings.

Twenty fighters were killed in the airstrikes that targeted rebel reinforcements, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the country’s unresolved civil war. Aleppo residents reported clashes and gunfire, and some were fleeing the fighting.

Schools and government offices were closed Saturday (November 30, 2024) as most people stayed indoors, according to Sham FM radio, a pro-government station. Bakeries were open.

In social media post, the insurgents were pictured outside of Aleppo citadel, the medieval palace in the old city center, and one of the largest in the world. In cellphone videos, the insurgents recorded themselves having conversations with residents they visited at home, seeking to reassure them they will cause no harm.

State media reported that a number of “terrorists,” including sleeper cells, have infiltrated parts of the city. Government troops chased them and arrested a number who posed for pictures near city landmarks, state media said.

On a state TV morning show Saturday (November 30, 2024), commentators said army reinforcements and Russia’s assistance will repel the “terrorist groups,” blaming Turkey for supporting the insurgents’ push into Aleppo and Idlib provinces.

Russia’s state news agency Tass quoted Oleg Ignasyuk, a Russian Defense Ministry official coordinating in Syria, as saying that Russian warplanes targeted and killed 200 militants who launched the offensive in the northwest on Friday (November 29, 2024). It provided no further details.

Aleppo has not been attacked by opposition forces since they were ousted from eastern neighborhoods in 2016 following a grueling military campaign in which Syrian government forces were backed by Russia, Iran, and its allied groups.

The attack on Aleppo followed weeks of simmering low-level violence, including government attacks on opposition-held areas. Turkey, which has backed Syrian opposition groups, failed in its diplomatic efforts to prevent the Syrian government attacks, which were seen as a violation of a 2019 agreement sponsored by Russia, Turkey and Iran to freeze the line of the conflict.

The offensive came as Iran-linked groups, primarily Lebanon’s Hezbollah, which has backed Syrian government forces since 2015, have been preoccupied with their own battles at home. A ceasefire in Hezbollah’s two-month war with Israel took effect Wednesday (November 27, 2024), the day the Syrian opposition factions announced their offensive. Israel has also escalated its attacks against Hezbollah and Iran-linked targets in Syria during the last 70 days.

Turkey’s state-run Anadolu news agency said the insurgents have seized control of large parts of Aleppo and Idlib countryside.

The 2016 battle for Aleppo was a turning point in the war between Syrian government forces and rebel fighters after 2011 protests against President Bashar Assad’s rule turned into an all-out war.

Russia and Iran and its allied groups helped Syrian government forces reclaim control of the city that year after a grueling military campaign and a siege that lasted for weeks.