(Bloomberg) -- Syria’s army ceded control of the city of Hama to advancing rebel forces, increasing the threat to President Bashar al-Assad’s hold on power.
Hama lies about halfway between Aleppo, which opposition fighters captured in a shock attack on government-held territory last week, and Damascus. Next on the road south is Homs, which if captured would potentially cut the Syrian capital off from the main land route to the Mediterranean coast.
The Syrian military said it redeployed outside Hama after opposition groups entered the center of the city, “despite suffering heavy losses,” according to a statement cited by Syria’s state news agency on Thursday. The military “will continue to carry out its national duty in reclaiming the areas entered by terrorist organizations,” it said.
The capture of Hama shows the rapid progress made by the rebels led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, a former affiliate of al-Qaeda that’s designated a terrorist organization by the US and others. Abu Mohammed Al Joulani, the head of HTS, said his forces are seeking to cleanse what he described as a “wound” in Syria and urged neighboring Iraq against getting involved to help Assad.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which tracks the conflict, said at last 700 people have been killed during battles that started in Aleppo.
Iran, Russia
The rebel advance marks the biggest threat to Assad since 2015, when Iranian and Russian forces helped him recapture territory taken during the ongoing civil war. The response this time from Tehran and Moscow will again be crucial in determining whether the Syrian president can retain control. Both countries are embroiled in separate conflicts, which may hinder their ability to help Assad. Still, his downfall would be a major blow to them, removing a key ally and likely reducing their sway in the region.
Iran, which already has a military presence in Homs, on Wednesday said it would weigh sending more troops to Syria if requested by Assad, though the Islamic Republic has been stretched over the past year by conflict with Israel, either directly or via allied militia groups such as Lebanon-based Hezbollah.
It’s unclear what Russian President Vladimir Putin will do while focused on his invasion of Ukraine. Moscow has used warplanes to strike rebel positions and has a military base at Syria’s Mediterranean port of Tartus.
“Depending on the situational analysis, we will be able to speak about the level of assistance the Syrian authorities will need to handle the militants and eliminate the threat,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Thursday, according to Interfax news agency.
In a video, rebel leader Joulani urged Iraq to prevent Iran-backed forces based in the Arab country from deploying to Syria. The Lebanese army, central to enforcing a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah that began just over a week ago, said its sent soldiers to the Syrian border, potentially setting up a block for any fighters attempting to cross the frontier.
Hezbollah is the largest of Iran’s allied militant groups and is considered a terrorist organization by the US and others. It has been severely depleted since Israel stepped up an offensive against the organization in September.
Israel, which also borders Syria, is alarmed by the situation. While Assad is a key ally of its enemy, Iran, the rise of HTS presents risks to its security.
The Israeli military is “preparing for all scenarios, both offensively and defensively,” a spokesman said on X after a meeting between the chief of staff and Defense Minister Israel Katz on Syria. It “will not allow a threat to exist near the border between Syria and Israel.”
Though Assad has held most of Syria’s major cities for the past eight years or so, many areas of the country are ruled by opposition groups.
Turkish-backed rebels this week captured Tal Rifat, near Aleppo, according to Turkey’s state-run news agency Anadolu, a setback for US-allied Kurdish forces who had been holding the town.
Hama’s capture carries strategic and symbolic significance for Assad’s opponents. The city was the site of a 1982 massacre by the president’s father, Hafez, who according to multiple international human rights organizations killed at least 25,000 people and leveled most neighborhoods in the climax of his battle against Islamist insurgents.
Decades later, Hama witnessed one of the biggest protests against Bashar during the Arab Spring uprisings of 2011.
The Syrian conflict so far has left between 300,000 to 500,000 dead, more than 7 million internally displaced and at least 6.4 million as refugees, according to United Nations agencies and Syrian organizations.
(Updates with more detail.)
©2024 Bloomberg L.P.
