Syrian rebels have entered Hama, pushing government forces to withdraw and reposition outside the major city that had been held by President Bashar al-Assad’s regime for more than a decade.
Syria’s Defence Ministry said on Thursday that “confrontations intensified between [Syrian government] soldiers and terrorist groups” – the government’s term for rebels – and that “these groups were able to penetrate several axes in the city and enter it, despite suffering heavy losses among them.”
“To protect civilian lives from Hama city’s residents … the military units stationed there have redeployed and repositioned outside the city,” it added.
The military vows to recapture the areas that “terrorist groups have entered,” it added.
Intense fighting between Syrian government forces and allied rebels has been ongoing around Hama, a city of about 1 million people, for days.
Hama is the second major city the rebels have captured in their lightning offensive in the country’s north-west after seizing Aleppo last week.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a war monitor, reported that rebels had entered Hama from the north-east following hours of fierce clashes on its outskirts.
Syrian rebels say hundreds of prisoners freed
Syria’s allied rebels said they were able to free hundreds of prisoners from Hama’s central prison.
“They freed hundreds of prisoners, some have been jailed since 2011,” Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said, referring to when Syria’s civil war erupted.
There were some 3,000 people in Hama’s prison, Abdel Rahman said.
He told dpa that this move will massively benefit Abu Mohamed al-Joulani, the leader of the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), and increase support for him.
HTS has been leading the allied groups advancing in north-western Syria.
After Aleppo and Hama, the rebels said they plan to capture city of Homs next.
“Our heroic people in Homs, your time has come,” a commander of HTS said on social media.
He urged Homs residents to join the rebels in “revolution against injustice and tyranny.”
Following the renewed outbreak of fighting in Syria’s civil war, UN Secretary General António Guterres called for humanitarian access to all civilians and an end to the violence.
He spoke about this on the phone with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Guterres said in New York.
“I emphasized the urgent need for immediate humanitarian access to all civilians in need – and a return to the UN-facilitated political process to end the bloodshed,” he said in a statement.
“Tens of thousands of civilians are at risk in a region already on fire.”
After 14 years of war in Syria, he said it was “time for serious dialogue.”
