Syrian government forces pull out of Hama after rebel advance

Syrian rebels ousted anti-government forces from Hama on Thursday, dealing a major new blow to the insurgents after a lightning advance across northern Syria and dealing a fresh blow to President Bashar al-Assad and his Russian and Iranian allies.

The Syrian army announced that the rebels had entered Hama after intense clashes and said they were relocating outside the city “to preserve civilian life and prevent put on urban combat.”

The rebels said they had captured areas in the north-east of the city and captured the main prison, freeing detainees.

The rebels said they were preparing to continue marching south towards Homs, the main city of the Syrian highway that connects Damascus to the north and the coast.

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

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

Rebels seized the northern capital city of Aleppo last week and have since pushed south from their enclave in northwestern Syria, reaching a strategic hill just north of Hama on Tuesday and moving on to the east and west sides of the city on Wednesday.

Hama has remained in government hands throughout the civil war, which erupted in 2011 as an uprising against Assad. The collapse of a revived rebellion would send shock waves through Damascus and its Russian and Iranian allies.

The city is more than a third of the way from Aleppo to Damascus and capturing it would open the way for a rebel advance on Homs, the main central city that acts as a crossroads linking the provinces. most populous in Syria.

Inside Hama, the site of an Islamic uprising that toppled the Assad dynasty in 1982, the internet was cut off and streets were evacuated on Wednesday, according to a resident who still has family in the city.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Thursday that there is an urgent need for immediate humanitarian access to all missing civilians in Syria and a return to a UN-backed political process to end the bloodshed.

He urged “everyone with influence to do their bit for the long-suffering people” in Syria and said it is the responsibility of all parties to protect civilians.

The leader of the rebels warns the PM of Iraq

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

Golani on Thursday in a video statement urged the Prime Minister of Iraq, Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, not to allow the country's Popular Movement Forces (PMF) which are linked to Iran to intervene in Syria.

The PMF, known as the Hashd al-Shaabi in Arabic, includes many Iranian-backed armed groups that previously fought in Syria to help Assad regain territory​​​​ fell to rebels in the early years of the Syrian war to recover.

“We urge and hope that Iraqi politicians, especially Mohammed Shia al-Sudani…

The PMF has said that it is not used in Syria, and leaders within it have said that they would only do so on orders from their leadership.

Reuters reported earlier this week that hundreds of Iraqi militia fighters had been sent to Syria to help the government fight rebels who captured Aleppo last week.

Golani said the fighting in Syria would not extend to Iraq, as rebel forces sought strategic economic and political ties with Baghdad after their goal of ousting the current Assad regime. .

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

Turkey denies involvement

Sudani said this week that Iraq will make every effort to preserve the security of that country and Syria, according to an official reading called by the President of Turkey Tayyip Erdogan.

Aleppo was the largest city in Syria before the war. HTS and the other rebel groups are trying to consolidate their rule in Aleppo, bringing it under the administration of the so-called Freedom Government that they established in their northwestern enclave.

Residents of Aleppo have said there is a shortage of bread and fuel and that telecom services have been cut.

The rebel forces advancing on Hama have included a Turkish-backed rebel coalition called the Syrian National Army, which holds a strip of territory along the border between Syrian and Turkish, rebel sources said.

Turkey, which designates HTS as a terrorist group, has long been the largest external sponsor of other rebel groups and its role will be critical to the future of any rebel-held region in Syria. . Ankara has denied it took part in the rebels' sudden sweep into Aleppo last week.