Syrian antigovernment forces say they have reached the edge of Homs, hours after thousands of people began to flee the key city amid the opposition’s lightning offensive.
In a short statement posted on Telegram late on Friday, fighters led by the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) armed group called on Syrian government forces to defect.
“Our forces have liberated the last village in the vicinity of the city of Homs, and they are now at the city’s walls,” a commander of the opposition forces said.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said earlier that thousands of Homs residents started fleeing overnight towards the western coast, where embattled Syrian President Bashar al-Assad still maintains control.
Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the UK-based monitoring group, said opposition fighters had captured two towns – Rastan and Talbiseh – in the Homs governorate before pushing further towards the city.
Homs, a key crossroads city linking Damascus to Syria’s coastal areas, is 46km (29 miles) south of Hama, which HTS and allied fighters captured on Thursday, days after seizing the country’s second-largest city Aleppo from government forces.
A Syrian army officer told the Reuters news agency that Russian bombing overnight had destroyed the Rastan bridge along the key M5 highway linking Hama to Homs. Rastan and Talbiseh are located on the Homs side of the bridge.
Reporting from Homs province late on Friday, Al Jazeera’s Omar al-Haj said Syrian government forces had conducted several air strikes on the main road in an effort to stop the opposition’s advance.
SOHR said Friday’s death toll as a result of Russian-backed Syrian government air strikes near Homs had risen to 20. That includes “five people from the same family”, Rahman said.
Joshua Landis, a University of Oklahoma professor, said if the opposition takes control of Homs, “that would cut the main highway that goes from Damascus … to Tartous and the coastal cities” where al-Assad enjoys support from the Alawite community.
The Syrian president hails from an Alawite town in the country’s coastal Latakia province.
The capture of Homs, Landis told Al Jazeera, “would be a death knell, I believe, for the remaining possibility that the Syrian army would consolidate its powers and make a stand”.
Meanwhile, Stephane Dujarric, spokesman for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, said the renewed fighting had displaced at least 370,000 people across the war-torn country since November 27.
“Since the escalation of hostilities, at least 370,000 men, women and children, boys and girls, have been displaced, including 100,000 who left their homes more than once. Most of the displaced are women and children,” Dujarric said on Friday.
Samer AbdelJaber, head of emergency coordination at the UN’s World Food Programme, earlier warned that displacement figures could swell to 1.5 million.
‘Radically different Syria’
Separately, Israel launched air attacks on two border crossings between Syria and Lebanon, hitting the Syrian side of the Arida and Jousiyeh crossings.
Lebanon’s Transport Minister Ali Hamieh told Reuters that they were important access routes to the Homs governorate.
The border attacks were confirmed by Syrian state news agency SANA and the Israeli military.
The army claimed to have hit weapons transfer hubs and infrastructure used by Lebanese armed group Hezbollah, which has pledged backing for al-Assad and claims to have sent “supervising forces” to Homs.
As the Syrian opposition forces pressed southwards, rebel military commander Hassan Abdel Ghani said on Telegram that “hundreds” of fighters were en route to Homs.
For its part, the Syrian Ministry of Defence said the army was targeting “terrorist vehicles and gatherings” in Hama governorate with the backing of “joint Syrian-Russian warplanes”.
On Friday, SOHR’s Rahman reported that Syrian troops “suddenly” pulled out of the eastern city of Deir az Zor and its surroundings, with “columns of soldiers” heading towards Palmyra in central Syria, located east of Homs and northeast of Damascus.
The oil-rich Deir az Zor governorate, which borders Iraq, is split between US-supported Kurdish forces to the east of the Euphrates and Iran-backed Syrian government forces and Iraqi militias to the west. ISIL sleeper cells are known to be present in the area.
Two security sources based in eastern Syria told Reuters that the US-backed alliance led by Syrian Kurdish fighters, known as the Syrian Democratic Forces, had taken full control of the city of Deir az Zor by Friday afternoon.
Jordan’s Interior Minister Mazen al-Frayeh also said on Friday that the Naseeb border crossing with Syria had been closed because of the security situation on the Syrian side.
Al Jazeera’s Resul Serdar, reporting from the Syria-Turkiye border, said “the Syria that were are seeing now is absolutely, radically a different Syria than [we saw] 10 days ago.”
“[The] government’s control is almost being challenged across the whole country,” Serdar said.
Foreign ministers meet in Baghdad
Homs, once dubbed the “capital of the revolution” because of the large-scale protests in the city when Syria’s uprising began in March 2011, came under government control in 2014 after years of siege and bombardment.
The city also has seen violence against its Alawite community, with at least 100 people killed in attacks claimed by the al-Nusra Front, a previous iteration of HTS that had links to al-Qaeda.
The rebel advance on Homs comes as Syrian Foreign Minister Bassam Sabbagh met with his Iraqi and Iranian counterparts in Iraq’s capital Baghdad on Friday.
Speaking during a news conference after the talks, Sabbagh said the Syrian opposition forces’ push was a threat to the “stability and security” of countries across the region. He said the army will “continue to fulfill their duty” against them.
Iraqi Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein also said the security of Syria is “the linchpin to the security of the region”.
“We in Iraq condemn these offensives,” Hussein told reporters.
“We emphasise that Iraqi territory should be protected, and Iraq cannot be part of … any war,” he added, stressing that his country will protect itself from “any terrorist attack”.
A senior Iranian official earlier told Reuters that Tehran would dispatch “missiles and drones” to Syria, sending more “military advisers” and “deploying forces” to support al-Assad.
