The Syrian army launched a counter-offensive on Wednesday to repel rebels led by radical Islamists who arrived on the outskirts of the large city of Hama, in central Syria, after a dazzling offensive from the north.
The fighting and bombings, which left 704 dead in one week, including 110 civilians, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (OSDH), are the first of this magnitude since 2020 in Syria, where a devastating war had broke out in 2011. They caused “numerous civilian victims”, according to the UN.
After seizing dozens of localities and most of Aleppo, Syria’s second city, the rebels arrived on Tuesday, according to this NGO, “at the gates” of Hama, a strategic city for the army because its Protection is essential for that of the capital Damascus, located around 200 kilometers further south.
“Last night, the noises were terrifying and we could clearly hear the incessant bombings,” testified Wassim, a 36-year-old driver who lives in Hama, contacted by AFP. “We are tired, we have been on edge for four days,” he added.
“I follow the news day and night, I don’t let go of my phone,” said a 22-year-old student, who left her university in Damascus to join her family in Hama when the offensive began.
Flight of civilians
After launching a counter-offensive on Tuesday “after midnight”, supported by the aviation, government forces “secured the north-eastern entrance to Hama” and took control of several villages, the OSDH announced on Wednesday, which reported fighting elsewhere in the province.
Government forces have sent “large military convoys” to Hama and its surrounding areas over the past 24 hours, added the UK-based NGO, which has an extensive network of sources in Syria.
On Wednesday, “fierce fighting” opposed the army, supported by Syrian and Russian planes, to the rebels in the north of Hama province, according to a military source cited by the official Sana agency.
The German agency DPA announced the death of one of its photographers, Anas Alkharboutli, killed in an airstrike near Hama.
In Sourane, about twenty kilometers north of the city, AFP images showed civilians fleeing, crammed into trucks and trailers, while rebel fighters, brandishing their weapons, patrolled aboard pick-up trucks. up.
Hama was the scene of a 1982 massacre by the army under the rule of President Bashar al-Assad’s father who was suppressing a Muslim Brotherhood insurgency.
It was also in this city that some of the largest demonstrations took place at the start of the 2011 pro-democracy uprising, the repression of which sparked the civil war.
More than 110,000 displaced
The UN deputy regional humanitarian coordinator for Syria, David Carden, told AFP that more than 115,000 people had been displaced by a week of fighting.
The Kurdish authorities who control regions of northeast Syria launched an “urgent” appeal for humanitarian aid on Wednesday in the face of the arrival of a “large number” of displaced people.
In Aleppo, held by armed rebels, a medical student told AFP on Tuesday that staff at his hospital were “largely absent, with services operating at half capacity”. “We try to respond to emergencies, we save equipment,” he testified, refusing to give his name.
Fast forward
Russia and Iran, Damascus’ main allies, as well as Turkey, a major supporter of the rebels, are in “close contact” to stabilize the situation, Russian diplomacy announced on Wednesday.
The country, ravaged by the civil war which left half a million dead, is now divided into several zones of influence, where the belligerents are supported by different foreign powers.
While relative calm has been maintained since 2020 in the northwest, a coalition of rebels dominated by the radical Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the former Syrian branch of Al-Qaeda, launched the November 27 a lightning offensive in this region.
In a few days, the rebels seized large swaths of northern Syria and a large part of Aleppo, which completely escaped Damascus’ control for the first time since the start of the civil war, inflicting a heavy setback to the regime of Bashar al-Assad.
HTS leader Abu Mohammad al-Jolani visited the Aleppo citadel on Wednesday, according to the coalition’s Telegram channel. Footage shows him greeting supporters from a car.
The Syrian president, for his part, announced an increase in the pay of career soldiers by 50%.
With the military support of Russia, Iran and the pro-Iranian Lebanese movement Hezbollah, the regime took back a large part of the country in 2015 and in 2016 the entirety of Aleppo, the eastern part of which was in the hands of the rebels since 2012.
For Rim Turkmani, a researcher at the London School of Economics, the rapid advance of the rebels does not mean, however, that they will be able to retain the territories they have taken. “I think they will realize very quickly that it is beyond their capacity to guard these regions and, more importantly, to govern them,” she told AFP.
American Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned against a resurgence of the Islamic State (IS) group in Syria, where this jihadist group had self-proclaimed a “caliphate” in 2014, straddling Iraq, before being defeated several years later.
This article was automatically published. Sources: ats / afp
