Thousands flee as Syrian insurgents advance to the doorstep of the country's third-largest city

By BASSEM MROUE
Associated Press

BEIRUT — Thousands of people fled the central Syrian city of Homs, the country’s third largest, as insurgents seized two towns on the outskirts Friday, positioning themselves for an assault on a potentially major prize in their march against President Bashar Assad.

The move, reported by pro-government media and an opposition war monitor, was the latest in the stunning advances by opposition fighters over the past week that have so far met little resistance from Assad’s forces. A day earlier, fighters captured the central city of Hama, Syria’s fourth largest, after the army said it withdrew to avoid fighting inside the city and spare the lives of civilians.

The insurgents, led by the jihadi Hayat Tahrir al-Sham group, or HTS, have vowed to march to Homs and the capital, Damascus, Assad’s seat of power. Videos circulating online showed a highway jammed with cars full of people fleeing Homs, a city with a large population belonging to Assad’s Alawite sect, seen as his core supporters.

If Assad’s military loses Homs, it could be a crippling blow. The city, parts of which were controlled by insurgents until 2014, stands at an important intersection between Damascus and Syria’s coastal provinces of Latakia and Tartus, where Assad enjoys wide support. Homs province is Syria’s largest in size and borders Lebanon, Iraq and Jordan.

Pressure on the government intensified from multiple directions.

Opposition protesters stormed security posts and army positions in the southern province of Sweida, opposition activists said. U.S.-backed Kurdish forces who control eastern and northeastern Syria began to encroach on government-held territory.

Offensive leaves Assad reliant on Russia

After years of largely being bottled up in a northwest corner of the country, the insurgents burst out a week ago, captured the northern city of Aleppo, Syria’s largest, and have kept advancing since. Government troops have repeatedly fallen back.

The sudden offensive has flipped the tables on a long-entrenched stalemate in Syria’s nearly 14-year-old civil war. Along with HTS, the fighters include forces of an umbrella group of Turkish-backed Syrian militias called the Syrian National Army. Turkey has denied backing the offensive, though experts say insurgents would not have launched it without the country's consent.

HTS’s leader, Abu Mohammad al-Golani, told CNN in an exclusive interview Thursday from Syria that Assad’s government was on the path to falling, propped up only by Russia and Iran.

“The seeds of the regime’s defeat have always been within it,” he said. “But the truth remains, this regime is dead.”

A key question about Assad’s ability to fight back is how much top ally Russia — whose troops back Assad’s forces — will throw support his way at a time when it is tied up in the war in Ukraine.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said he planned to discuss the developments in Syria with his Turkish and Iranian counterparts at a meeting Friday in the Qatari capital, Doha.

In an interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, he said international actors were backing the insurgents’ advances and that he would discuss “the way to cut the channels of financing and arming them.”

Meanwhile, Russia’s embassy in Syria issued a notice reminding Russian citizens that they may use commercial flights to leave the country “in view of the difficult military-political situation.”

The foreign ministers of Iran, Iraq and Syria — three close allies — gathered Friday in Baghdad to consult on the rapidly changing war. Syrian Foreign Minister Bassam Sabbagh said the current developments may pose “a serious threat to the security of the region as a whole.”