BEIRUT: Islamist-led rebels introduced on Sunday (Dec 8) that they’d captured the strategic metropolis of Homs, on the way in which in direction of Damascus the place Syria’s embattled authorities mentioned it was organising an impenetrable safety cordon.
The defence ministry earlier denied rebels had entered Homs, describing the state of affairs there as “secure and steady”.
However the chief of the Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) group, Ahmed al-Sharaa, mentioned their management over Homs marked a “historic occasion that may distinguish between reality and falsehood”.
The seize of Homs, Syria’s third-largest metropolis, would lower the seat of energy within the capital Damascus from the Mediterranean coast, a key bastion of the Assad clan which has dominated Syria for the previous 5 a long time.
Hassan Abdel Ghani, a number one commander of the insurgent coalition, mentioned the group’s “operations proceed to totally liberate the Damascus countryside”.
“Our eyes are on the capital, Damascus”, he mentioned on Telegram.
Earlier, President Bashar al-Assad’s authorities denied that the military had withdrawn from areas round Damascus.
“A really sturdy safety and navy cordon” was being established across the capital “and nobody … can penetrate this line of defense that we, the armed forces, are constructing,” Inside Minister Mohammed al-Rahmoun instructed state tv.
Homs lies about 140km north of the capital and is the third main metropolis seized by the rebels who started their advance on Nov 27, reigniting a years-long conflict that had turn into largely dormant.
Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, earlier reported insurgent factions taking management of some Homs neighbourhoods “after the withdrawal of safety forces and the military from their final positions within the metropolis”.
Abdel Ghani mentioned the rebels had freed greater than 3,500 detainees from the central jail of Homs.
The defence ministry mentioned “armed forces are deployed across the metropolis, positioned in sturdy defensive traces bolstered with varied varieties of weapons”.
