Syrian rebels capture second major city as army withdraws from Hama
By Mostafa Salem and Eyad Kourdi, CNN
(CNN) — Syrian rebels have driven government forces from Hama, a major city that the country’s regime had held over more than a decade of civil war, further weakening President Bashar al-Assad’s grip on the nation.
The Syrian military said on Thursday that it had to withdraw from the strategically important hub of Hama after the rebels “penetrated several parts of the city.”
The rebels, led by the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), said they freed hundreds of those “wrongfully detained” from the city’s central prison.
Hama is the second major city the rebels have captured in their week-long offensive, which has thrown the Assad regime’s forces into disarray. After capturing Aleppo last week, the rebels swept south to Hama – and now are setting their sights on Homs, the next city south on the highway to the Syrian capital of Damascus.
“Our heroic people in Homs, your time has come,” a spokesperson for the rebels said Thursday.
The shock offensive delivered a huge blow to Assad and his backers in Iran and Russia, and has reignited a civil war that had been largely dormant for years. More than 300,000 civilians in Syria have been killed since the conflict erupted after Assad’s government tried to stamp out peaceful pro-democracy protests in 2011.
Hama is strategically located at a key crossroads in western-central Syria, providing direct supply lines between the capital Damascus and Aleppo. Rebels had been unable to capture the city since the start of the civil war.
Abu Mohammad Al Jolani, the leader of Hayat Tahrir Al Sham (HTS) – the main rebel group leading the offensive – said his forces entered Hama to “cleanse a 40-year-old wound.”
The city holds symbolic significance as it was the site of one of the country’s largest and most brutal massacres in 1982, when President Hafez al-Assad – the current ruler’s father – ordered his military to quash a revolt. A 1983 Amnesty International report put the death toll on both sides as between 10,000 and 25,000.
Hama was also the site of some of the first protests against the Syrian regime during the Arab Spring in 2011.
Videos geolocated by CNN showed rebel fighters celebrating – almost in disbelief at their progress – as they entered Hama.
“Guys, my country is being liberated. I swear to God, we are inside Hama city, we are inside Aleppo city,” a fighter cheered as he filmed himself by Alaarbaen Roundabout in Hama.
HTS, the rebel movement, was formed by Jolani after he dismantled al Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate al-Nusra Front in 2016 over ideological differences. Jolani then formed HTS in early 2017 and has attempted to rebrand it into a moderate Islamist group.
Despite Jolani’s effort to distance his new group from al Qaeda and ISIS, the United States designated the HTS a Foreign Terrorist Organization in 2018 and placed a $10 million bounty on him.
Since bursting out of their pocket of territory in the northwest of the country a week ago, the rebels’ progress has been stunningly swift.
The rebels have now pledged to push further south to Homs, another major city about 50 kilometers (30 miles) south of Hama. Another 160 kilometers (100 miles) further down the road lies Damascus, where the Assad government is based.
If the rebels capture Homs next, this would mean they have effectively split the Syrian regime into two pockets: one along the coast and the other in Damascus.
The-CNN-Wire
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