Islamist-led rebels were within striking distance of Syria’s third city Homs on Friday after seizing control of two strategic towns in a lightning sweep, a war monitor said.
“Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and allied factions have reached five kilometers (three miles) from the outskirts of Homs city” after capturing Rastan and Talbisseh, said Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
He said controlling Homs would allow the rebels to “cut off the main road leading to the Syrian coast,” the stronghold of President Bashar al-Assad‘s Alawite minority.
Homs is south of Hama, which Islamist group HTS and allied fighters captured on Thursday, just days after taking second city Aleppo from the government.
Rebel military commander Hassan Abdel Ghani said in a statement on Telegram on Friday that “our forces continue to march steadily towards the city of Homs.”
He said “hundreds” of fighters who had been forced to leave Homs years ago after the government retook it had returned “to deter Assad’s aggression against their city.”
Homs was once dubbed the “capital of the revolution” because of the large-scale protests in the city when Syria’s uprising began in March 2011.
In the conflict’s early years, Homs saw fierce battles between opposition factions and the Syrian army, which took control of the city in 2014 after fighters withdrew from its devastated Old City under a settlement deal, following two years of siege and bombardment.
Between March and May 2017, thousands were evacuated from Waer, Homs’s last rebel-held neighborhood, allowing regime forces to retake full control.
The city has also seen violence against its Alawite community.
In April 2014, at least 100 people, mostly civilians, were killed in twin attacks in Homs that targeted a majority Alawite neighborhood.
The attacks were claimed by the Al-Nusra Front, the Syrian branch of Al-Qaeda which now HTS leader Abu Mohammed al-Jolani previously led.
Jolani announced his group had cut ties with the jihadists in 2016, and Al-Nusra was dissolved the following year, to be replaced by the key component of HTS.
The Britain-based Observatory had said tens of thousands of Alawite residents were fleeing Homs on Thursday towards the coast, fearing the rebel advance.
