Syrian army withdraws from Hama after insurgents make latest advance

The Syrian army has withdrawn from the central city of Hama after insurgents broke through its defenses, the military said Thursday, in another setback for President Bashar Assad.

The announcement came hours after opposition fighters said they had entered the city and were marching toward the center.

The Syrian army said it redeployed from Hama and took positions outside the city to protect the lives of civilians.

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The capture of Hama, Syria’s fourth largest city, is another blow for Assad days after insurgents captured much of the northern city of Aleppo, the country’s largest city.

On Thursday morning, Syrian insurgents said they entered Hama after three days of intense clashes with government forces on its outskirts, part of an ongoing offensive.

The Syrian army said in a statement later that a number of troops were killed after resisting the insurgents for days. It accused the attackers of relying on suicide attacks to break through the defenses of the city.

Hama is one of the few cities that remained under full government control during Syria’s conflict, which broke out in March 2011 following a popular uprising. Its capture would be a major setback for President Bashar Assad.

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The offensive is being led by the jihadi group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham as well as an umbrella group of Turkish-backed Syrian militias called the Syrian National Army.

Their sudden capture of the northern city of Aleppo, an ancient business hub, was a stunning prize for Assad’s opponents and reignited the conflict which had been largely stalemated for the past few years.

The next target of the insurgents is likely to be the central city of Homs, the country’s third largest. Homs is about 40 kilometers (25 miles) south of Hama.

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Aleppo’s takeover marked the first opposition attack on the city since 2016 when a brutal Russian air campaign retook it for Assad after rebel forces had initially seized it. Intervention by Russia, Iran, Iranian-allied Hezbollah, and other militant groups has allowed Assad to remain in power.

The latest flare-up in Syria’s long civil war comes as Assad’s main regional and international backers are preoccupied with their own wars.

Tens of thousands of people have been displaced by the renewed fighting, which began with the surprise opposition offensive on Nov. 27.

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The insurgents claimed on their Military Operations Department channel on the Telegram app Thursday that they had entered Hama and were marching toward its center.

“Our forces are taking positions inside the city of Hama,” the channel quoted a local commander identified as Maj. Hassan Abdul-Ghani said.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition war monitor, said fierce battles were fought inside Hama.

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“If Hama falls, it means that the beginning of the regime’s fall has started,” the Observatory’s chief, Rami Abdurrahman, told The Associated Press before the city’s capture.

Hama is a major intersection point in Syria that links that country’s center with the north as well the east and the west. It is about 200 kilometers (125 miles) north of the capital, Damascus, Assad’s seat of power. Hama province also borders the coastal province of Latakia, a main base of popular support for Assad.

The city’s name is known for the 1982 massacre of Hama, one of the most notorious in the modern Middle East, when security forces under Assad’s late father, Hafez Assad, killed thousands to crush a Muslim Brotherhood uprising.