Syrian rebels push towards Damascus as Assad’s grip on power wanes

Syrian rebels advanced across the country on Saturday as they pushed towards their goal of capturing Damascus and toppling the Assad regime after seizing cities and swaths of territory in a lightning offensive.

“Damascus awaits you,” Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, the leader of the main rebel group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), told his fighters on Saturday.

There were reports late Saturday that the rebels had entered the strategic city of Homs, with Reuters quoting their spokesman Hassan Abdulghani as saying insurgents had “fully liberated” it. The Syrian military denied rebels had taken the city.

President Bashar al-Assad’s army has ceded control of the city of Deir Ezzor in the east and has lost towns in the south too as the uprising broadened to include multiple opposition groups.

“Our forces have begun implementing the final phase of encircling the capital Damascus,” Abdulghani said on Telegram.

He added that the rebels were sending reinforcements to the Damascus “axis”, that opposition fighters had taken over three cities in southern Syria, and that they had overrun a military base and more than a dozen towns and villages on the outskirts of Homs.

There were multiple reports that Syrian soldiers had left Homs and areas around Damascus. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a London-based war monitor, said that regime forces had withdrawn from several towns in the greater Damascus area. The Financial Times was not able to verify these reports.

The multipronged assault poses the most serious threat to Assad’s rule in a decade, reigniting a 13-year civil war that had been largely frozen since 2020.

Syrian state media denied that army units had withdrawn from the Damascus countryside and that Assad had fled. But some residents said they were preparing for the regime to fall. “It’s over,” said one Damascene.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who has long backed some Syrian opposition forces, hailed “a new diplomatic and political reality in Syria” on Saturday.

In the past, Assad’s main supporters — Iran, the Iranian-backed Lebanese militant movement Hizbollah, and Russia — helped him fight off rebel advances. But US envoy Amos Hochstein said on Saturday that the “collapse” of Assad’s army had accelerated as his backers were enfeebled and distracted by other conflicts.

Assad’s allies are “significantly weaker than they were, and with Russia in a different area, not able to give its attention to Syria, and Iran just weaker overall”. 

Hochstein added that Iran appeared to be “pulling out of Syria to some degree”. The New York Times reported that Iranian military commanders were being evacuated.

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In a post on Truth Social, President-elect Donald Trump claimed there was “never much benefit” for Russia in Syria and cautioned against US involvement.

However, Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov on Saturday said Moscow would stand by its ally and was “trying to do everything not to allow terrorists to prevail, even if they say they are no longer terrorists”. The Islamist HTS is listed as a terrorist organisation by the US.

Rebels, led by HTS and supported by Turkish-backed factions, have already captured Syria’s second city Aleppo and Hama since launching their offensive 11 days ago.

Homs was the largest city still controlled by Assad’s regime on the highway that leads south to the capital Damascus.

Analysts said the loss of the city would cut off Damascus from Assad’s other big support base in the coastal Latakia and Tartus governorates. Assad comes from the minority Alawite sect, whose population is concentrated on the coast.

The coastal area is also crucial to Russia as it gives Moscow access to the Mediterranean.

Homs is close to the Syrian-Lebanese border, where Hizbollah has a large presence. Iran and Hizbollah’s support of Assad a decade ago helped shore up the dictator’s rule, but a year of war with Israel has left the militant group weakened. HTS has asked the Lebanese people to avoid getting drawn into the conflict.

Rebels were making gains south of Damascus, too, as other opposition groups joined the rebellion. While HTS claimed rebels had taken over Deraa, the birthplace of the Syrian revolution in 2011, and the cities Suwaida and Quneitra, there were conflicting reports about territorial control.

In a sign of the severity of the crisis, Moscow warned its citizens on Friday to be ready to flee Syria. But Iran’s foreign ministry spokesperson said its embassy in Damascus had not been evacuated and was working normally.

Additional reporting from Najmeh Bozorgmehr in Tehran, Ayla Jean Yackley in Istanbul and Andrew England in Doha