A Syrian rebel who took part in the capture of the city of Hama says the fight to push on will continue.
In the latest blow to President Bashar al Assad, insurgents in the Middle Eastern country took control of the central city on Thursday.
Speaking to Sky News, one rebel said: “Just as we liberated Aleppo and now Hama, we will proceed to Homs, and Damascus, and Deir el Zor.”
He also claimed to have received support from the people in Hama.
Abu Omar, a resident in the city, said they had been waiting “45 years… for this moment”.
When asked if he was afraid of the rebel attack, he said: “On the contrary, we’ve been waiting for this moment. Our children, our family, they’ve all come back to us.
“Everyone was a million times more scared before, praise God, we’ve been liberated. No more oppression and tyranny.”
Mr Omar added: “What’s happened to us here, has happened in Idlib and Aleppo… and the regime has completely failed.”
Rebels seize Hama
The Syrian army said it had withdrawn and taken up positions outside the city to protect civilians, hours after opposition fighters said they were marching towards its centre.
The insurgents said they had entered Syria’s fourth-largest city on Thursday after days of intense fighting with government forces on its outskirts.
The fall of Hama follows a lightning offensive by the jihadi group Hayat Tahrir al Sham (HTS) and Turkish-backed Syrian militias called the Syrian National Army.
The surprise assault saw militants capture much of Syria’s largest city Aleppo last week and reignited the country’s civil war, where the frontlines have largely been frozen in place over the last few years.
The battle for Hama saw fierce battles inside the city, according to the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
“If Hama falls, it means that the beginning of the regime’s fall has started,” the monitor’s chief, Rami Abdurrahman, said before the city was captured.
Hama is one of the few cities that remained under Mr Assad’s control during Syria’s civil war, which erupted in 2011 following a popular uprising.
The central city of Homs, Syria’s third-largest, is around 40km (25 miles) away and is likely to be the rebels’ next target.
It sits on a major crossroads in Syria, linking the capital Damascus to the north and the coast to the west.
Syrian Defense Minister Ali Mahmoud Abbas said in an address to the people of the country.
“We have good positions on the battlefield. Our armed forces have been redeployed for the sake of saving lives,” he was quoted as saying by the SANA news agency.
According to the minister, the army moved its forces out of the city of Hama “to save civilian lives.”
The minister warned that terrorists are working to take advantage of the current situation in their media efforts and are conducting a disinformation campaign against the Syrian people and the armed forces.
“These organizations may resort to publishing false statements or orders on behalf of the General Command of the armed forces, as well as audio recordings or videos created with the help of artificial intelligence,” he said.
The minister called on civilians and military personnel in Syria to “understand the danger of this misleading campaign, not to believe it and be guided exclusively by what is published through official national channels.”
On November 27, the Jabhat al-Nusra extremist group (banned in Russia) carried out a major attack in northern Syria. The Syrian military command later said the army had to fall back from Aleppo to regroup and prepare for a counterattack.
On December 5, the command of the Syrian Armed Forces announced that militants infiltrated into several neighborhoods of Hama. According to a statement from the command, government forces in charge of defending Hama were pulled out of the city.
Written with reports from Sky News, TASS
