Syrian government forces withdraw from Hama after rebel advance

Syrian rebels ousted pro-government forces from Hama on Thursday, giving the insurgents another major victory after a lightning advance in northern Syria and dealing another blow to President Bashar al-Assad and his Russian and Iranian allies.

The Syrian army announced that rebels had entered Hama after intense clashes and said it was redeploying outside the city “to preserve the lives of civilians and prevent urban fighting.”

The rebels said they had captured neighborhoods in the northeast of the city and seized the central prison, freeing detainees.

The rebels said they were preparing to continue their march south toward Homs, Syria's major crossroads that connects the capital Damascus to the north and the coast.

“Your time has come,” a rebel operations room said in an online message, calling on the city’s residents to rise up in revolution.

Al Jazeera television broadcast what it said was footage of rebels inside the city, some of them meeting civilians near a roundabout while others were traveling in vehicles. military and mopeds.

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The rebels captured Aleppo last week and have since pushed south from their enclave in northwest Syria, reaching a strategic hill just north of Hama on Tuesday and advancing toward the city's eastern and western flanks on Wednesday.

Hama remained in government hands throughout the civil war, which erupted in 2011 as a rebellion against Assad. Its fall in the face of a revived insurgency would send shock waves to Damascus and its Russian and Iranian allies.

The city is more than a third of the way from Aleppo to Damascus and its capture would pave the way for a rebel advance toward Homs, the main central city that functions as a crossroads connecting Syria's most populous regions.

In Hama, the scene of an Islamist uprising crushed by the Assad dynasty in 1982, the Internet was cut and the streets emptied on Wednesday, according to a resident whose family remained in the city.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Thursday there was an urgent need to ensure immediate humanitarian access to all civilians in need in Syria and to return to a UN-facilitated political process to end bloodshed.

He urged “all those with influence to do their part for the long-suffering Syrian people” and said all parties are obligated to protect civilians.

Rebel leader warns Iraqi prime minister

The most powerful rebel faction is the Sunni Islamist militant Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the former al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria. Abu Mohammed al-Golani, its leader, has pledged to protect Syria's religious minorities and called on them to abandon Assad, but many still fear the insurgents.

Golani urged Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani in a video statement on Thursday not to allow the Iran-aligned Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) to intervene in Syria.

The PMF, known as Hachd al-Shaabi in Arabic, brings together numerous Iranian-backed armed factions that have previously fought in Syria to help Assad retake territory that fell to rebels in the early years of the war. Syrian.

“We urge and hope that Iraqi politicians, first and foremost Mohammed Shia al-Sudani… will do their duty to prevent the intervention of the Iraqi Hashd al-Shaabi in what is happening in Syria,” Jolani said.

The PMF said it was not deployed to Syria, and its commanders said they would only do so on orders from their leaders.

Reuters reported earlier this week that several hundred Iraqi militiamen had deployed to Syria to help the government fight rebels who seized Aleppo last week.

Golani said the fighting in Syria would not spread to Iraq because rebel forces wanted to establish strategic economic and political ties with Baghdad after achieving their goal of toppling the current Assad regime.

On Wednesday, Golani visited Aleppo's historic citadel, a symbolic moment for rebels who were driven from the city in 2016 after months of siege and intense fighting, their biggest defeat of the war.

Turkey denies any involvement

Soudani said this week that Iraq would make every effort to preserve the security of that country and Syria, according to the official statement of his call with Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan.

Aleppo was Syria's largest city before the war. HTS and other rebel groups are trying to consolidate their power in Aleppo, placing it under the administration of the so-called Salvation Government that they have established in their northwest enclave.

Residents of Aleppo said they were short of bread and fuel and that telecommunications services had been cut.

Rebel forces advancing toward Hama include a Turkish-backed insurgent coalition called the Syrian National Army, which holds a swath of territory along the Syrian-Turkish border, rebel sources said.

Turkey, which designates HTS as a terrorist organization, has long been the biggest external supporter of other rebel factions and its role will be crucial to the future of any broader insurgent region in Syria. Ankara has denied involvement in the rebels' sudden invasion of Aleppo last week.