As rebels advance south, how much trouble is Syria's Assad in?
Syrian rebel groups have taken Aleppo and Hama and moving south to Homs, inching closer to Damascus in an urgent threat to the Assad regime.
Just a week after seizing Aleppo in a shock offensive, Syrian rebels led by the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham captured the central city of Hama on Thursday. Now they are moving toward Homs, a lifeline for the Assad regime.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s government forces withdrew from Hama, with the army claiming it was redeploying outside the city to “preserve civilian lives and prevent urban combat.”
In a post on X, the political affairs department of HTS' governing body in Idlib, the Syrian Salvation Government, wrote, “From Hama, the sun of freedom rises.” Hama had been under government control throughout Syria’s civil war that broke out in 2011.
The rebel advance in northwest Syria began on Nov. 27, when HTS and its allies, including a collection of Turkish-backed factions known as the Syrian National Army, seized several towns in the western Aleppo countryside from government forces. By Saturday, they had taken control of most of the city of Aleppo.
