Syrian rebels say they have taken control of the major city of Hama, after the military withdrew its troops amid fierce battles.
The leader of the Islamist militant group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), Abu Mohammed al-Jawlani, declared “victory” in the city and vowed there would be “no revenge”.
Earlier, a rebel commander said HTS fighters and their allies had taken over a prison and released inmates, while the military said it had redeployed troops to “preserve civilian lives and prevent urban combat”.
Hama is home to one million people and is 110km (70 miles) south of Aleppo, which the rebels captured last week after launching a surprise offensive from their stronghold in the north-west.
The rebel commander told residents of Homs, which is the next city south on the highway from Aleppo to Damascus, that “your time has come”.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), a UK-based monitoring group, says that more than 720 people, including 111 civilians, have been killed across the country since the start of the rebel offensive eight days ago.
More than half a million people in Syria have been killed since a civil war erupted in 2011 after President Bashar al-Assad’s government cracked down violently on peaceful pro-democracy protests.
Earlier this week, the United Nations expressed alarm at the sudden escalation of the conflict and warned that the country was “grave danger of further division, deterioration, and destruction”.
President Assad has vowed to “crush” the rebels and accused Western powers of trying to redraw the map of the region, while his key allies Russia and Iran have offered their “unconditional support”.
Russian warplanes have intensified their strikes on rebel-held areas in recent days, Iran-backed militias have sent fighters to reinforce the government’s defensive lines, and Iran has said it is ready to send additional forces to Syria if asked.
Turkey, which supports the Syrian opposition but has denied reports that it is involved in the HTS-led offensive, has urged Assad to engage in a political process with the opposition to bring an end to Syria’s 13-year civil war.
Turkish-backed rebel factions have meanwhile capitalised on the government’s retreat in the north by launching a separate offensive on a pocket of territory near Aleppo that was controlled by a Kurdish-led militia alliance, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). Turkey, which has a large restive Kurdish minority, considers the Kurds in Syria as a threat.
Before the start of the rebel offensive, the government had regained control of Syria’s main cities with the help of Russia, Iran and Iran-backed militias. However, large parts of the country remained out of its control.
The rebels’ last stronghold was in Aleppo and Idlib provinces, which border Turkey and where more than four million people were living, many of them displaced from government-held areas.
The enclave was dominated by HTS, which is designated as a terrorist organisation by the UN, US, Turkey and other countries because it was al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria until it formally broke ties in 2016.
A number of allied rebel factions and jihadist groups were also based there, along with Turkish-backed SNA factions and Turkish forces.