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Rebels led by radical Islamists who launched an offensive in northern Syria approached Hama, the country’s fourth city, on Tuesday, to which regime forces are trying to block access, supported by Russian aircraft.
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December 3, 2024 – 5:34 p.m.
(Keystone-ATS) Faced with this resumption of large-scale fighting in this country ravaged by the civil war which broke out in 2011, international calls for de-escalation and the protection of civilians have multiplied.
On Tuesday morning, an AFP photographer saw dozens of abandoned Syrian army tanks and vehicles on the road leading to Hama, a strategic city in the center of the country between Aleppo, in the northwest, and the capital Damascus.
The radical Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and other rebel factions launched a dazzling offensive in northwestern Syria on November 27, seizing dozens of towns and a large part of Aleppo, the country’s second city, before continuing their progress towards the south.
On Monday, fighting took place in the north of the province of Hama, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (OSDH), between the rebels, who took control of several localities, and government forces supported by the Russian and Syrian air forces.
The army, which had not put up “significant resistance” in Aleppo, according to the OSDH, announced that it had sent reinforcements to slow down the progress of the rebels.
Flight of the inhabitants
“We are progressing towards Hama after having cleaned” the localities leading there, a rebel fighter, introducing himself as Abu al-Hadwa al-Sourani, told AFP.
On Monday, these forces attacked the town with rocket launchers, where six civilians were killed, according to OSDH, an NGO based in the United Kingdom, which relies on a vast network of sources in Syria.
The fighting and bombings in the northwest, the first of this magnitude since 2020, have left 571 dead since November 27, including 98 civilians, according to a new report Tuesday from this NGO.
As of Saturday, more than 48,500 people had been displaced in the Idlib and Aleppo regions, more than half of them children, according to the UN Office of Humanitarian Affairs (Ocha).
Among these displaced people, thousands of Syrian Kurds were fleeing the advance, among the rebels, of formations supported by Turkey, to reach further east the areas controlled by the Kurds. Their vans or motorcycles overloaded with mattresses and blankets formed a long line on the highway leading from Aleppo to Raqa.
For the first time since the start of the civil war in 2011, the regime has completely lost control of Aleppo, a city of around two million inhabitants, taken by the rebels with the exception of its northern Kurdish neighborhoods.
“The terror” of airstrikes
In Idleb, which Syrian and Russian planes bombed in response to the offensive, AFP images showed rescuers searching the rubble of buildings razed by strikes, which also targeted the Haranbouch displaced persons camp.
“I cannot describe (…) the terror we felt,” testified Hussein Ahmad Khodr, a teacher.
In Aleppo, where armed rebels were patrolling, residents queued to receive bread distributed by an association, while according to the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), bakeries and food stores are closed.
Reached by telephone by AFP, Nazih Yristian, 60, was cloistered at home with his wife, in the Armenian quarter.
“No one has attacked us so far, but we want to leave until things calm down,” explained the man, according to whom the exit from the city had been cut off.
The UN reported Tuesday “numerous civilian victims, including a large number of women and children” in attacks by both camps and the destruction of “civilian property, including health establishments”, education, “and food markets”.
Aleppo’s hospitals, fewer than eight of which continue to operate, are overwhelmed, the World Health Organization said.
According to the NRC, the water distribution network was damaged.
The United States, at the head of an international anti-jihadist coalition in Syria, urged “all countries” on Monday to work for “de-escalation”, as did the European Union which “condemned” Russian strikes “on densely populated areas.
Hostile to the Syrian regime, Qatar judged on Tuesday that military action could not resolve the crisis and indicated that it was providing humanitarian aid to the Syrians in coordination with Turkey.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who received the support of his Russian counterparts, Vladimir Putin, and Iranian counterparts, Massoud Pezeshkian, denounced an attempt to “redraw the regional map in accordance with the interests and objectives of America and the ‘West’.
Syria has been divided by the civil war into several zones of influence, where the belligerents are supported by different foreign powers.
With the military support of Russia, Iran and Hezbollah, the regime recaptured a large part of the territory in 2015 and in 2016 the entirety of Aleppo, the eastern part of which was taken in 2012 by the rebels.
The conflict, sparked by the brutal repression of pro-democracy demonstrations, has left around half a million dead.
Before the rebel offensive, northwest Syria enjoyed an uneasy calm under a ceasefire established in 2020, under the sponsorship of Ankara and Moscow.
