Thousands flee as Syrian rebels close in on third major city

Part of the foundation for the success of HTS and its allies has been laid over the past four years, with the group investing in professionalizing its forces and buying materiel such as drones, analysts say.

“The expansion of units… along with large-scale indigenous rocket and missile production — has created a force that Assad’s regime has seriously struggled to defend against, let alone outmaneuver,” said Charles Lister, director of the Syria program at the Middle East Institute, a Washington-based think tank in a post on X.

The group has sought to strengthen its diplomatic links too, opening channels of communication with organizations and civilians traditionally hostile to it, Lister said.

HTS has negotiated with Shia and Sunni leaders, Kurdish groups and with regime military commanders, “most resulting in peaceful takeovers, safe exits & some [publicly unacknowledged] regime defections,” Lister said.

While some might dismiss that shift in messaging as superficial, “first impressions could count for a lot in defining what comes next,” he added.

While some reports suggested that HTS-led forces were as little as six miles away from northern Homs, the Syrian defense ministry said in a post on Facebook that its units were targeting the rebels to the north and south of Hama with “artillery fires, missiles and Syrian-Russian joint military aircraft.”

Inside the city, video footage showed a statue of President Assad’s father and predecessor Hafez being torn down.

NBC News was unable to independently confirm claims by either side — government repression of media and a rapidly shifting map of make independent journalism almost impossible in Syria where the Assad regime has long received aerial and military backing from Moscow. 

Heavy Russian-led bombing of civilian infrastructure was a key and bloody feature of the Syrian civil war in the years leading to the 2020 ceasefire.

Members of the insurgent forces also told NBC News that bombing by Russian aircraft overnight also focused on the Rustan bridge along the main route to Homs, presumably in a bid to slow the rebels’ advance.

Meanwhile, the Israeli Air Force struck border crossings, roads and other infrastructure on Syria’s border with Lebanon early Friday, according to local Syrian and Lebanese media.

Israel’s military also said in a statement that its air force struck “weapon-smuggling routes and terror infrastructure sites located near the Syrian regime’s crossings at the Syrian-Lebanese border. These routes were used by Hezbollah to smuggle weapons.”

Iran-backed Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, as well as Tehran itself, have long been backers of the Assad regime and the re-eruption of the Syrian civil war follows a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah, after months of fighting degraded the militia. 

Elsewhere in the country, the Syrian Democratic Forces — the U.S.-backed Kurdish group known as SDF — seized government positions in and around the major eastern cities of Raqqa and Deir Ez-Zour, according to Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.