Rebel groups in Syria entered Rastan and Talbiseh, two towns just north of the nation’s third city of Homs, early on Friday, two local media outlets reported.
The insurgency’s progression into the towns came one day after anti-Assad forces captured the city of Hama, Syria’s fourth largest, following the Syrian army’s decision to withdraw, it said to avoid bloodshed and spare civilian lives.
The insurgents, led by the jihadist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), have vowed to march on Homs and the capital Damascus.
Homs, which was partly controlled by rebels up until 2014, is a major waypoint between Damascus, where President Bashar al-Assad resides, and the Assad stronghold coastal provinces of Latakia and Tartus.
Both provinces have large groups of Assad’s minority Alawite Islamic sect and are where his Russian allies have a naval base and air base.
Homs province is the country’s largest by area and shares borders with Lebanon, Iraq, and Jordan.
Insurgents are now just 3 miles from Homs city, according to the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a war monitor that is hostile to the Assad regime.
The organization’s chief, Rami Abdurrahman, said: “The battle of Homs is the mother of all battles and will decide who will rule Syria.”
After Hama fell under rebel control, opposition activists said thousands of Homs residents loyal to Assad were seen fleeing toward Damascus and the coast.
Videos circulating online appear to show a highway jammed with cars full of people fleeing Homs city. The Epoch Times is not able to verify the accuracy of those videos.
The pro-Assad radio station Sham FM said the rebels had entered Rastan and Talbiseh without resistance, but Syria’s military has not yet said whether or not they have pulled out of the towns.
State news agency SANA quoted an unnamed military official as saying on Friday that the Syrian and Russian air forces were attacking insurgents in Hama province, killing dozens of fighters.
Damascus’s defense minister, Gen. Ali Mahmoud Abbas, said in a statement late on Thursday that the retreat of government forces from Hama was a tactical one, and went on to say they would retake what had been lost areas and that they were “in a good position on the ground.”
Abbas branded the insurgents “takfiri,” meaning Islamic extremists, and said that they had backers from abroad.
He stopped short of naming specific countries.
His comments were made before the insurgents marched south toward Homs.
The offensive is being led by HTS as well as an umbrella group of Turkish-backed Syrian militias called the Syrian National Army.
HTS is designated as a terrorist group by most of the West as well as Russia. It is a Salafist Sunni Islamic faction formed from Jabhat al-Nusra, which itself began as a wing of al-Qaeda in Syria.
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.
Assad took over as president and leader of the ruling Ba’ath Party after the death of his father, Hafez al-Assad, in 2000.
His government is backed by Russia as well as Iran and the Iranian-backed proxy in Lebanon, Hezbollah. However, Moscow has had its focus drawn away from Syria by the war in Ukraine, and the latter pair have been preoccupied by clashes with Israel, following the Hamas attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
