By Syrian rebels claim to have captured a fifth city and are closing in on the capital of Damascus as they carry out a lightning-fast offensive that threatens to further destabilize a region already convulsed by war.
The militant group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) claimed Saturday afternoon ET that it had captured Homs, the largest province in Syria, the borders of which stretch to Iraq, Jordan and Lebanon.
NBC News has not independently verified the claim.
If the rebel group were to control the Syrian-Lebanese border, it would cut off the road between Damascus and the Syrian coast, significantly weakening the regime of President Bashar al-Assad.
HTS’s senior commander, Lt. Col. Hassan Abdul-Ghani, claimed that within 24 hours, HTS had captured the cities of Homs, Sweida, Quneitra and Daraa.
“Our operations continue to liberate the entire countryside of Damascus, and our eyes are focused on the capital, Damascus,” Abdul-Ghani said in a post on WhatsApp.
It is very difficult for independent journalists to operate in Syria, and NBC News could not verify the rebels’ claims.
A senior administration official and a U.S. defense official said Damascus could fall soon, but did not specify a timeline.
Anti-government fighters parade in the streets of Hama Saturday.BAKR AL KASSEM / AFP – Getty Images
Rami Abdurrahman, who heads the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a U.K.-based war monitor, said Saturday that Syrian troops and members of different security agencies have withdrawn from Homs, and that rebels have entered parts of the city, The Associated Press reported.
Thousands of people fled the strategically important city this week amid the rebel fighters’ advance.
The observatory said Saturday that Jaramana, a Damascus suburb, was no longer controlled by the Syrian government. Video verified by NBC News showed people in Jaramana tearing down a bust of Hafez al-Assad, the late father of the president.
On Friday, the monitoring group said that rebels in the south controlled more than 90% of the Daraa region, “including Daraa city.”
Daraa is a symbolic and strategic victory for the rebels as the place where pro-democracy protests in 2011 sparked the country’s ongoing civil war, while it is also an important crossing on the border.
Syria’s army, meanwhile, accused HTS of spreading videos claiming that it had taken control of areas in rural Damascus in order to “intimidate” citizens.
In a separate statement, it said that its forces in Daraa had carried out a “repositioning,” and “established a strong and cohesive defensive and security perimeter in that direction.”
An anti-government fighter gestures from inside a vehicle patrolling Hama on Friday.OMAR HAJ KADOUR / AFP – Getty Images
The fall of Homs, if confirmed, would leave three of the country’s five largest cities in the hands of the forces led by HTS, and no major cities between rebel forces and Damascus.
In less than two weeks, insurgents led by HTS have captured Aleppo in the north, as well as the central city of Hama, where government forces were forced out Thursday.
The collapse of government control in Daraa and the threat to Homs signals a growing vulnerability in Assad’s hold on power.
Russia and Iran have long supported Assad, with Russia maintaining a military presence including a naval base at Tartus. But both nations’ influence has been weakened by broader regional tensions, including Israel’s war in Gaza and clashes with Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Russia’s yearslong war with Ukraine.
H.A. Hellyer, a senior associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, a London-based think tank, told NBC News on a phone call Saturday that it’s “pretty much the endgame for Assad” if the rebels take Homs.
“Once they get Homs, then really Damascus is cut off and they’ll all be centered around Damascus and Latakia on the coast.”
But Hellyer said there was not yet a definitive outcome to the conflict despite the rebels’ rapid advance.
“It comes down to how much fighting spirit there is left in this rump of the Syrian army,” he added. “How much they feel they can hold out in terms of support from the the Russians and the Iranians, which hasn’t been forthcoming.”
Various reports from around the country also suggested that the fall of Aleppo and Hama, as well other cities such as Idlib and numerous rural settlements, has significantly strained Assad’s forces as fighting between government troops and various rebel groups raged around the country.
Pro-Assad soldiers were also battling Kurdish forces who seized government positions in eastern Syria near the cities of Raqqa and Deir Ez-Zor, the observatory said.
An anti-government fighter poses for a picture in front of one of the waterwheels, or norias, of Hama.OMAR HAJ KADOUR / AFP – Getty Images
To the south of the country, state media quoted Jordan’s interior ministry as saying that it was closing its Jaber border crossing to all outgoing traffic “due to the security conditions surrounding southern Syria.”
The observatory said Saturday that Syrian government forces had withdrawn from the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights for the first time since Israel captured the area from Syria in the 1967 Mideast war and annexed it in 1981.
The observatory says more than 820 people, including 111 civilians, have been killed across the country since the rebels began their offensive.
