Syrian insurgents close in on Homs as they seek path to Damascus – forcing thousands to flee

Thousands of civilians have fled Syria’s third-biggest city of Homs, with insurgents within striking distance as part of a lightning advance against the regime of president Bashar al-Assad.

The push into the towns of Rastan, Talbiseh and Al-Dar al-Kabirah – the latter a suburb of Homs – came a day after opposition gunmen captured the central city of Hama, Syria’s fourth-largest, after the Syrian army said it withdrew. They had already taken control of Aleppo.

The insurgents, led by the jihadi group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), have said they will push on through Homs towards the capital Damascus. The city of Homs, parts of which were controlled by insurgents until 2014, is a major intersection point between Damascus and Syria’s coastal provinces of Latakia and Tartus, where Assad enjoys wide support and where his Russian allies have a naval base and air base. Homs province is Syria’s largest in size and borders Lebanon, Iraq and Jordan.

After years locked behind frozen front lines, the insurgents have burst out of their northwestern Idlib stronghold and pushed the swiftest battlefield advance by either side since a street uprising against Assad mushroomed into civil war 13 years ago.

The Syrian president regained control of most of Syria after his key allies – Russia, Iran and Lebanon’s Hezbollah group – came to his support. However, his allies’ attentions have been diverted by other crises, including Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and Hezbollah’s conflict with Israel over the war in Gaza. Russia's embassy in Syria has urged Russian nationals to leave the country.

“The battle of Homs is the mother of all battles and will decide who will rule Syria,” said Rami Abdurrahman, chief of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition war monitor.

The leader of HTS, Abu Mohammad Al-Golani, said the sweeping assault aimed to “build Syria” and bring Syrian refugees back home from Lebanon and Europe. Another opposition commander, Hassan Abdul Ghany, urged Syria’s military officers to defect, in a video statement aired on Friday.

The Syrian Observatory said thousands of people had begun fleeing from Homs on Thursday night towards the Mediterranean coastal regions of Latakia and Tartus.

Wasim Marouh, a resident of Homs city who decided not to leave, said most of its main commercial streets were empty and only a few grocery shops were open as pro-government militia groups were roaming the streets. Thousands of families had rushed out of the city overnight and traffic jams held up cars for hours, he told Reuters.

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Russian bombing overnight destroyed the Rustan bridge along the M5 highway, the main route to Homs, to prevent rebels using it to advance, a Syrian army officer said.

Iran will send missiles, drones and more advisers to Syria, a senior Iranian official said. Tehran has been focused on tensions with its arch-enemy Israel since the Gaza war erupted in October 2023.

“It is likely that Tehran will need to send military equipment, missiles and drones to Syria... Tehran has taken all necessary steps to increase the number of its military advisers in Syria and deploy forces,” the official told Reuters, on condition of anonymity. “Now, Tehran is providing intelligence and satellite support to Syria.”

Up to 1.5 million people could be forced to flee any upsurge in fighting in Syria, a senior UN official said on Friday. The violence has already displaced 280,000 people since it erupted in late November, the World Food Programme’s Samer AbdelJaber told reporters in Geneva.

The foreign ministers of Iran, Iraq and Syria — three close allies — gathered in Baghdad on Friday to consult on the rapidly changing war. Iraqi Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein expressed “deep concern”, saying his government is closely following the situation in Syria.

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Jordan has closed its only passenger and commercial border crossing into Syria. Jordan’s interior minister said Jordanians and Jordanian trucks would be allowed to return via the crossing, known as the Jaber crossing on the Jordanian side, while no one would be allowed to cross into Syria.

In another alarming development for Assad, the head of the US-backed Syrian Kurdish force said the Jihadi Isis group, which led a reign of terror in swathes of Iraq and Syria until its defeat by a US-led coalition in 2017, had now taken control of some areas in eastern Syria.

“Due to the recent developments, there is increased movement by Islamic State mercenaries in the Syrian desert, in the south and west of Deir ez-Zor and the countryside of al-Raqqa,” Mazloum Abdi told a press conference, referring to areas in eastern Syria.

The abrupt turnaround has struck a blow to Syria’s already decrepit economy. On Friday, the US dollar was selling on Syria’s parallel market for about 18,000 pounds, a 25 per cent drop from a week ago. When Syria’s conflict erupted in March 2011, a dollar was valued at 47 pounds. The drop further undermines the purchasing power of Syrians at a time when the UN has warned that 90 per cent of the population are below the poverty line.

Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that the insurgent advances were not something Turkey desired, but blamed the developments on Assad’s refusal to enter a dialogue with Turkey.

“We had made a call to Assad. We said, ‘Come, let’s meet, let’s determine the future of Syria together,’” Erdogan said. “Unfortunately, we could not get a positive response from Assad.”

Reuters and Associated Press contributed to this report