Rebels led by Islamic radicals entered the strategic city of Hama, in central Syria, on Thursday (5), after fierce battles with President Bashar al-Assad’s army, which admitted defeat.
Hama is the second city that the rebel coalition led by the Islamic extremists of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), or the Levant Liberation Organization, has taken in a week. Aleppo, the country’s second city, fell on Sunday (1st).
The fighters “entered several neighborhoods in the city of Hama, where street battles are taking place with regime forces,” said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (OSDH).
The Syrian Army admitted that it had lost control of the city and indicated that its forces had “redeployed” outside of Hama. Located 210 km north of Damascus, the town is strategic for Bashar al-Assad’s government because it controls the road to the capital.
The OSDH reported on Thursday morning that “heavy” fighting between rebels and the Syrian Army was taking place in Hama, and that it had sent reinforcements to the city.
The leader of the Syrian rebels and HTS, Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, promised that “there will be no revenge” after the capture of Hama, where the army wiped out the Muslim Brotherhood rebellion in 1982. “I ask God Almighty that this be a conquest without revenge,” Jolani said in a video message broadcast on the rebels’ Telegram channel, after announcing that his fighters had entered Hama ‘to close the wound opened 40 years ago’.
Hundreds of prisoners released
On Thursday, the rebels also announced that they had taken over Hama prison and freed hundreds of detainees. “Our forces entered the central prison in Hama and freed hundreds of unjustly detained prisoners,” Hassan Abdel Ghani, military leader of the HTS-led rebel coalition, announced on Telegram.
Russia and Iran, Damascus’ main allies, and Turkey, a major supporter of the rebels in the Syrian National Army group, are in “close contact” to stabilize the situation, Russian diplomacy said on December 4.
For his part, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned against a resurgence of the Islamic State (IS) group in Syria, where the jihadist group proclaimed itself a “caliphate” in 2014, before being defeated several years later.
The fears arise because, when founded in 2017, HTS was the Syrian arm of Islamic State.
Civilians
The clashes unleashed since the start of the rebel offensive are the first of this magnitude since 2020. Syria has been devastated by a civil war that has left half a million dead since 2011, and which has divided the country into several zones of influence, with groups supported by different foreign powers.
Since the start of the rebel offensive on November 27, fighting and shelling have left more than 727 dead, including 111 civilians, according to the OSDH, which is based in the UK but has a vast network of sources in Syria.
The NGO Human Rights Watch (HRW) expressed concern about the risks to civilians and accused the rebel groups of human rights violations.
The UN’s deputy regional humanitarian coordinator for Syria, David Carden, told AFP that more than 115,000 people had been displaced in a week of fighting.
The German news agency DPA announced the death of one of its photographers, Anas Alkharboutli, in an air strike near Hama.
(RFI and AFP)