Syrian rebels enter Hama in their second territorial gain during a week-long offensive

Syrian rebel forces entered the central city of Hama on Thursday after a two-day battle, marking another major territorial gain in their week-long offensive against the forces loyal to Damascus and their Russian and Iranian allies.

The Syrian army confirmed that rebel forces had entered Hama city after intense clashes, prompting its units to redeploy outside the city, according to a statement published by state media. The army added that its forces "fought fierce battles to repel and thwart the violent and successive attacks launched by the rebels on the city of Hama".

Abu Muhammad Al Golani, the leader of Hayat Tahrir Al Sham, an Al Qaeda offshoot that has led the offensive, said the rebels entered the city “to cleanse a 40-year-long wound. The conquest of Hama will contain no revenge”.

The latest escalation in Syria’s protracted civil war comes as President Bashar Al Assad's key allies are preoccupied with their own conflicts: Russia in Ukraine and Hezbollah and Iran with Israel.

Hama fell despite intense Russian air bombing to prevent the rebel forces from attacking the city in a pincer movement. The scene of a 1982 massacre after a failed uprising against the president's father Hafez Al Assad, the city is the second major urban centre since the offensive started last week. The rebels took the northern city of Aleppo, Syria's business capital, and have since advanced into areas near the heartland of the Alawite minority, who form the bedrock of support for the president.

Aleppo's takeover marked the first opposition attack on the city since 2016, when an intense Russian air campaign retook it after rebel forces had initially seized it. Interventions by Russia, Iran and Iranian-allied Hezbollah and other militant groups have allowed the Syrian government loyal to President Al Assad to remain in power.

“We, as Hezbollah, will stand by Syria to repel this aggression with whatever we can,” Hezbollah leader Naim Qassem said in a televised speech on Thursday evening, without elaborating on whether the group would send additional reinforcements to Syria.

Hezbollah has been a key ally of the government of Mr Al Assad in the more than 13-year civil war in Syria. But the group has been severely damaged by a 13-month war with Israel that has seen most of its senior leaders killed.

Fawaz Tello, a prominent opposition figure, predicted that the city of Homs would fall next as bases and defences of the Syrian army could crumble in front of a “well-planned” advance.

The Syrian army said its units have “redeployed” outside the city after “fierce battles.” It said that the military units repositioned themselves outside the city “to preserve the lives of civilians”. It added that "over the past few hours, with the intensification of confrontations between our soldiers and terrorist groups... these groups were able to breach a number of axes in the city and entered it".

Losing Hama could prove catastrophic for President Bashar Al Assad, whose strategy in the civil war has been to preserve Damascus and other mercantile urban centres that some analysts call “useful Syria”, as opposed to fringe areas where his government had lost control early on in the civil war. Hama is also crucial for the main Russian coastal base of Hmeimim and the coastal mountains.

The capture of Aleppo last week has already deprived the core regime's coastal areas of depth that had helped Mr Assad's government survive the 2011 revolt against his rule and the ensuing civil war. Hama governorate, like the rest of Syria, is mostly Sunni. Armed resistance in the area against Syria's Alawite rulers has traditionally been small.

In 1982, the Defence Companies, an elite unit of the Syrian military led by Rifaat Al Assad, the President's uncle, overran Hama after an uprising in several parts of Syria. As many as 45,000 civilians were killed in the attack, according to Syrian lawyers who traced civil records.

When the nationwide Syrian revolt broke out in March 2011, Hama residents joined the mass protest movement. Hundreds of people in the city and its suburbs were killed in the ensuing crackdown on forces loyal to Mr Assad, which culminated in Syrian tanks rolling into the city in July of that year.

Spokesman of the rebel forces Hassan Abdul Ghan said that they are “returning Hama to its people”, and that they had released hundreds of detainees from Hama central prison after taking the city.