Syria’s army said it is withdrawing from Hama, a symbolic and strategically important central city, marking a second major gain for a newly formed rebel coalition that also captured Aleppo last week.
“Over the past few hours, with the intensification of confrontations between our soldiers and terrorist groups and the rise of a number of martyrs in our ranks, these groups were able to penetrate several parts of the city and entered it,” the Syrian military said in a statement carried by state news outlet SANA.
Rebels said they freed hundreds of those “wrongfully detained” from the central prison.
Aleppo, Syria’s second-largest city, was recaptured last week by rebel groups after a surprise offensive overran President Bashar al-Assad’s forces and allied militias.
The offensive was a major setback for Assad and his backers in Iran and Russia, and has reignited a civil war that had been largely dormant for years.
Hama is strategically located at a key crossroads in western-central Syria, providing direct supply lines between the capital Damascus and Aleppo. Rebels had been unable to capture the city since the Syrian civil war began in 2011.
Abu Mohammad Al Jolani, the leader of Hayat Tahrir Al Sham (HTS) – the main rebel group leading the offensive – said his forces entered Hama to “cleanse a 40-year-old wound.”
The city holds symbolic significance as it was the site of one of the country’s largest and most brutal massacres in 1982, when President Hafez al-Assad – the current ruler’s father – ordered his military to quash a revolt. A 1983 Amnesty International report put the death toll on both sides as between 10,000 and 25,000.
HTS was formed by Jolani after he dismantled Al-Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate al-Nusra Front in 2016 over ideological differences. Jolani then formed HTS in early 2017 and has attempted to rebrand it into a moderate Islamist group.
Despite Jolani’s effort to distance his new group from al Qaeda and ISIS, the United States designated the HTS a Foreign Terrorist Organization in 2018 and placed a $10 million bounty on him.
The rebels vowed to advance further south, to the city of Homs, another major city about 165 kilometers (100 miles) from the capital Damascus.
“Our heroic people in Homs, your time has come. Declare it a revolution against oppression and tyranny,” said Hassan Abdulghani, the spokesperson for the rebels.
Syria’s civil war began during the 2011 Arab Spring as the government suppressed an uprising against Assad, who has been president since 2000. The country plunged into a full-scale civil war as the protests turned into an armed rebellion.
Hama was the site of some of the first protests against the Syrian regime during the Arab Spring.
This is a developing story and will be updated.