As opposition fighters pushed further south with their swift attack on government forces, thousands of people fled the Syrian city of Homs, according to a major monitoring group.
The terrorist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) would control three of the nation’s five largest cities if the strategically significant municipality fell, leaving no significant city between opposition troops and Damascus, the capital of Syria.
They have already taken control of the central city of Hama, where government soldiers were driven out on Thursday, and the second city of Aleppo in the north in less than two weeks.
Hassan Abdul-Ghani, senior commander of the HTS-led forces, wrote on X on Friday, “Thank God, our forces are still moving steadily toward the city of Homs after convoys carrying hundreds of displaced people from Homs arrived to deter Assad’s aggression against their city.”
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported Friday that thousands of people had fled to the western coastal regions, a government bastion where fighting has not been as intense as in other parts of the nation, as his forces approached.
The United States and the United Nations have classified HTS as a terrorist organization. It was formed from the previous Al Qaeda offshoot, Jabhat al-Nusra. It is one among several opposing forces in Syria that are battling to overthrow the Assad government, which has killed hundreds of thousands of Syrians since the start of the civil war over 14 years ago.
Following a ceasefire in 2020, the civil war cooled down, but it has since flared up once more after rebels captured Aleppo in a lightning strike.
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