In Syria, the situation is becoming even more complicated for the regime of Bashar al-Assad. The rebels, who launched a dazzling offensive, announced on Saturday that they had taken Homs, a strategic city north of Damascus. They are therefore approaching the capital where the authorities have claimed to have set up a “very solid” security cordon.
In a message published on Telegram, the Syrian Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham claimed that its forces controlled the entire city of Homs, with their leader Ahmed al-Chareh calling this victory “historic” in a video.
Start of panic in Damascus
The rebel leader, who used his real name instead of his nom de guerre, Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, said: “We are living the last moments of the liberation of the city of Homs, […] this historical event which will distinguish truth from lies.”
Earlier in the day, panic gripped Damascus residents after rebels announced they had begun encircling the capital from the south. Rumors of a flight by President Bashar al-Assad added to the ambient anxiety, later denied by his services.
On November 27, a coalition of rebels led by radical Islamists launched an offensive from northwest Syria, quickly seizing large territories and the major cities of Aleppo and Hama, before advancing towards the south towards Homs, about 150 kilometers north of Damascus, in the most spectacular advance in thirteen years of civil war.
The Assad clan in power for more than 50 years
A rebel leader, Hassan Abdel Ghani, confirmed that the fighters had entered Homs, adding that 3,500 prisoners had been freed. He had earlier claimed that rebels arriving from the south had “begun to encircle” Damascus and were less than twenty kilometers from the entrance to the city.
Our file on the Civil War in Syria
After the capture of Homs, only Damascus and the Mediterranean coast remained in the hands of the forces of Bashar al-Assad, whose family has been in power for more than five decades.
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