Syrian rebels have said they seized control of the southern city of Daraa – the birthplace of a 2011 uprising against President Bashar al-Assad – as they press on with their lightning advance.
The insurgents, led by the jihadi group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), said they will push on through to Syria’s third-largest city Homs towards the capital Damascus.
The city of Homs, parts of which were controlled by insurgents until 2014, is a major intersection point between Damascus and Syria’s coastal provinces of Latakia and Tartus, where President Assad enjoys wide support and where his Russian allies have a naval base and air base. Homs province is Syria’s largest in size and borders Lebanon, Iraq and Jordan.
Since the rebels’ sweep into Aleppo a week ago, government defences have crumbled across the country as insurgents seized a string of major cities and rose up in places where the rebellion had long seemed over.
The rebels have now seized Aleppo in the north, Hama in the centre, Deir al-Zor in the east and Suweida and Deraa in the south.
Syria’s military said it was carrying out airstrikes around Hama and Homs and reinforcing on that front. It also said it was repositioning around Deraa and Suweida, without acknowledging their capture by rebels.
After years locked behind frozen front lines, the insurgents have burst out of their northwestern Idlib stronghold and pushed the swiftest battlefield advance by either side since a street uprising against President Assad mushroomed into civil war 13 years ago.
The Syrian president regained control of most of Syria after his key allies – Russia, Iran and Lebanon’s Hezbollah group – came to his support. However, his allies’ attention has been diverted by other crises, including Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and Hezbollah’s conflict with Israel over the war in Gaza. Russia’s embassy in Syria has urged Russian nationals to leave the country.
The rapid pace of these events has caused fears across the Middle East of a fresh wave of regional instability. Western officials say the Syrian military is in a difficult situation, unable to halt the rebel gains and forced into retreat.
Hezbollah has sent some “supervising forces” to Homs on Friday but any significant deployment would risk exposure to Israeli airstrikes, Western officials said. Israel attacked two Lebanon-Syria border crossings on Friday, Lebanon said.
Iran-backed Iraqi militias are on high alert, with thousands of heavily armed fighters ready to deploy to Syria, many of them amassed near the border. Iraq does not seek military intervention in Syria, a government spokesman said on Friday.
The leader of HTS, Abu Mohammad Al-Golani, said the sweeping assault aimed to “build Syria” and bring Syrian refugees back home from Lebanon and Europe. Another opposition commander, Hassan Abdul Ghany, urged Syria’s military officers to defect, in a video statement aired on Friday.
The foreign ministers of Iran, Iraq and Syria — three close allies — gathered in Baghdad on Friday to consult on the rapidly changing war. Iraqi foreign minister Fuad Hussein expressed “deep concern”, saying his government is closely following the situation in Syria.