Syrian insurgents close in on Homs en route to capital

Thousands of civilians have fled Syria's third-biggest city of Homs, with insurgents within striking distance as part of a lightning advance against the regime of president Bashar alAssad.

- JABED AHMED

The push into the towns of Rastan, Talbiseh and Al-Dar alKabirah the latter a suburb of Homs - came a day after opposition gunmen captured the central city of Hama, Syria's fourth largest, after the Syrian army said it withdrew. They had already taken control of Aleppo.

The insurgents, led by the jihadi group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), have said they will push on through Homs towards the capital Damascus. The city of Homs, parts of which were controlled by insurgents until 2014, is a major intersection point between Damascus and Syria's coastal provinces of Latakia and Tartus, where Assad enjoys wide support and where his Russian allies have a naval base and air base. Homs province is Syria's largest in size and borders Lebanon, Iraq and Jordan.

After years locked behind frozen front lines, the insurgents have burst out of their northwestern Idlib stronghold and pushed the swiftest battlefield advance by either side since a street uprising against Assad mushroomed into civil war 13 years ago.

The Syrian president regained control of most of Syria after his key allies Russia, Iran and Lebanon's Hezbollah group to his support. However, his allies' attention has been diverted by other crises, including Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine and Hezbollah's conflict with Israel over the war in Gaza.

Russia's embassy in Syria has urged Russian nationals to leave the country.

“The battle of Homs is the mother of all battles and will decide who will rule Syria,” said Rami Abdurrahman, chief of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition war monitor.