Syrian rebels enter suburbs of key city of Homs

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Syrian rebels enter suburbs of key city of Homs

Syrian rebels have entered suburbs of the key city of Homs, sources say, pressing a lightning week-long advance as front lines collapse across the country and government forces battle to save President Bashar al-Assad’s 24-year rule.

A Homs resident, and army and rebel sources said the insurgents had breached government defences from the north and east of the city on Saturday. The Syrian military did not immediately comment on the reports.

Fighting had raged around the north of strategically vital Homs since late on Friday with government forces reinforcing and using intense air strikes to hammer the rebels.

Insurgents also seized almost the entire southwest within 24 hours and advanced to within 30km of Damascus as government forces fell back to more defensible positions, rebels said.

Underscoring the possibility of a renewed uprising in the capital itself, protesters in a Damascus suburb tore down a statue of Assad’s father, residents said, with video showing them tearing it to pieces.

Assad remains in Damascus, Syria’s state news agency said.

Since the rebels’ sweep into Aleppo a week ago, government defences have crumbled at dizzying speed as insurgents seized a string of major cities and rose up in places where the rebellion had long seemed over.

Besides capturing Aleppo in the north, Hama in the centre and Deir al-Zor in the east, rebels said they have taken southern Quneitra, Deraa and Suweida.

The twin threats to strategically vital Homs and the capital Damascus now pose an existential threat to Assad’s decades of rule in Syria and the continued influence there of his main regional backer Iran.

The pace of events has stunned Arab capitals and raised fears of a new wave of regional instability.

Syria’s civil war, which erupted in 2011 as an uprising against Assad’s rule, dragged in big outside powers, created space for jihadist militants to plot attacks around the world and sent millions of refugees into neighbouring states.

Assad had long relied on allies to subdue the rebels, with bombing by Russian warplanes while Iran sent allied forces including Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Iraqi militia to bolster the Syrian military and storm insurgent strongholds.

But Russia has been focused on the war in Ukraine since 2022 and Hezbollah has suffered big losses in its own gruelling war with Israel, significantly limiting its ability or that of Iran to bolster Assad.

An opposition figure in touch with rebel command and a Syrian army source both also said the insurgents were inside Homs.

Air strikes had pummelled rebel positions north of the city after the insurgents reached the city outskirts late on Friday, both sides said.

Seizing Homs, an important crossroads between the capital and the Mediterranean, would cut off Damascus from the coastal stronghold of Assad’s ********* Alawite sect, and from Russia’s air and naval base.

“Homs is the key. It will be very hard for Assad to make a stand but if Homs should fall, the main highway from Damascus to Tartus and the coast will be closed, cutting the capital off from the Alawite Mountains,” said Jonathan Landis, a Syria specialist at the University of Oklahoma.

In the south, the fall of Deraa and Suweida on Friday, followed by Quneitra on Saturday, could allow a concerted assault on the capital, the seat of Assad’s power.

The Syrian military pulled back as far as Saasa 30 km from Damascus to regroup, a Syrian army officer said. Jarmana, where protesters pulled down a statue of Hafez al-Assad, the current president’s father, is in the city’s southern suburbs.

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