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Syrian rebels say they’ve taken management of the key metropolis of Hama, after the navy withdrew its troops amid fierce battles.
The chief of the Islamist militant group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), Abu Mohammed al-Jawlani, declared “victory” within the metropolis and vowed there can be “no revenge”.
Earlier, a insurgent commander mentioned HTS fighters and their allies had taken over a jail and launched inmates, whereas the navy mentioned it had redeployed troops to “preserve civilian lives and prevent urban combat”.
Hama is residence to 1 million individuals and is 110km (70 miles) south of Aleppo, which the rebels captured final week after launching a shock offensive from their stronghold within the north-west.
The insurgent commander instructed residents of Homs, which is the subsequent metropolis south on the freeway from Aleppo to Damascus, that “your time has come”.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), a UK-based monitoring group, says that greater than 720 individuals, together with 111 civilians, have been killed throughout the nation for the reason that begin of the insurgent offensive eight days in the past.
More than half 1,000,000 individuals in Syria have been killed since a civil warfare erupted in 2011 after President Bashar al-Assad’s authorities cracked down violently on peaceable pro-democracy protests.
Earlier this week, the United Nations expressed alarm on the sudden escalation of the battle and warned that the nation was “grave danger of further division, deterioration, and destruction”.
President Assad has vowed to “crush” the rebels and accused Western powers of making an attempt to redraw the map of the area, whereas his key allies Russia and Iran have supplied their “unconditional support”.
Russian warplanes have intensified their strikes on rebel-held areas in latest days, Iran-backed militias have despatched fighters to strengthen the federal government’s defensive strains, and Iran has mentioned it is able to ship further forces to Syria if requested.
Turkey, which helps the Syrian opposition however has denied studies that it’s concerned within the HTS-led offensive, has urged Assad to interact in a political course of with the opposition to carry an finish to Syria’s 13-year civil warfare.
Turkish-backed insurgent factions have in the meantime capitalised on the federal government’s retreat within the north by launching a separate offensive on a pocket of territory close to Aleppo that was managed by a Kurdish-led militia alliance, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). Turkey, which has a big restive Kurdish minority, considers the Kurds in Syria as a menace.
Before the beginning of the insurgent offensive, the federal government had regained management of Syria’s predominant cities with the assistance of Russia, Iran and Iran-backed militias. However, massive elements of the nation remained out of its management.
The rebels’ final stronghold was in Aleppo and Idlib provinces, which border Turkey and the place greater than 4 million individuals had been residing, a lot of them displaced from government-held areas.
The enclave was dominated by HTS, which is designated as a terrorist organisation by the UN, US, Turkey and different international locations as a result of it was al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria till it formally broke ties in 2016.
Quite a lot of allied insurgent factions and jihadist teams had been additionally primarily based there, together with Turkish-backed SNA factions and Turkish forces.
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