Damascus is expected to fall, three US officials told CBS News, as Syrian insurgents have surrounded the capital in a fast-moving offensive. Syrian rebels also claimed to have captured the main central city of Homs on Sunday.
Iranian troops defending Syrian President Bashar Assad have been “virtually” evacuated from Syria, US officials said. The government was forced to deny rumors that Assad had fled the country.
Syrian rebels reached the outskirts of Damascus on Saturday as part of a fast-moving offensive that has seen them take over some of Syria’s largest cities, opposition activists and a rebel commander said on Saturday.
Izettin Kasim/Anadolu via Getty Images
The advances last week were among the largest in recent years by opposition factions, led by a group that traces its roots to al-Qaeda and is considered a terrorist organization by the U.S. and United Nations. In their quest to overthrow Assad’s government, the insurgents, led by the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham group (HTS), have encountered little resistance from the Syrian army.
For the first time in the country’s long civil war, the government now controls only three of the 14 provincial capitals: Damascus, Latakia and Tartus.
Rami Abdurrahman, head of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition war monitor, said insurgents are now active in the Damascus suburbs of Maadamiyah, Jaramana and Daraya. He added that opposition fighters also marched from eastern Syria to the Damascus suburb of Harasta on Saturday.
An insurgent commander, Hassan Abdul-Ghani, posted on the messaging app Telegram that opposition forces have begun carrying out the “final phase” of their offensive by encircling Damascus. He added that insurgents were moving from southern Syria towards Damascus.
Ghani said early Sunday local time that insurgents had “completely liberated” Homs, Syria’s third-largest city, Reuters reported, as government forces had allegedly abandoned the city. If they did indeed capture Homs, they would cut the link between Damascus, Assad’s seat of power, and the northern coastal region where the president enjoys broad support.
Ghaith Alsayed / AP
Its main international backer, Russia, is busy with its war in Ukraine, and Lebanon’s powerful Hezbollah, which at one point sent thousands of fighters to bolster its forces, has been weakened by years of conflict with Israel. Iran, meanwhile, has seen its allies across the region deteriorated by regular Israeli airstrikes. The Israeli military said on Saturday that after armed individuals carried out an attack on a UN post in the Hader area, its forces were currently assisting UN forces in repelling the attack.
On Saturday, President-elect Donald Trump commented on the situation on Truth Social, saying, “THE UNITED STATES SHOULD NOT HAVE ANYTHING TO DO WITH IT. THIS IS NOT OUR FIGHT. LET IT PLAY OUT. DO NOT ADVISE ANYTHING!”
Three US officials told CBS News that the al-Assad family’s rule, which began in 1971, appears to be coming to an end.
“The United States has no intention of wading militarily into the middle of a Syrian civil war,” White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan told an audience at the Reagan National Defense Forum, an annual gathering of national security officials and defense contractors. and lawmakers at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California. “What we’re going to do is focus on America’s national security priorities and interests.”
He said the U.S. will continue to act as necessary to prevent Islamic State — a violent anti-Western extremist group not known to be involved in the offensive but with sleeper cells in Syria’s deserts — from exploiting the openings provided by the fighting , will exploit.
How the conflict flared up again
Thousands of people fled the area during the dramatic escalation of the civil war, which had simmered for years without major progress from either side until war broke out. rebels launched a shock offensive about two weeks ago.
The capture of Homs was a major victory for the rebels, who have already taken the northern cities of Aleppo and Hama, as well as large parts of the south, in a lightning offensive that began on November 27. Analysts said rebel control over Homs would increase. be a game changer. Aleppo is the second largest city in Syria.
HTS leader Abu Mohammed al-Golani told CNN in an exclusive interview from Syria on Thursday that the aim of the offensive is to overthrow Assad’s government.
The Syrian army withdrew from much of southern Syria on Saturday, leaving more parts of the country, including two provincial capitals, under the control of opposition fighters, the army and an opposition war monitor said. The realignment away from the southern provinces of Daraa and Sweida came as the Syrian army sent large numbers of reinforcements to defend Homs.
The Syrian army said in a statement earlier Saturday that it had carried out redeployments and repositionings in Sweida and Daraa after the checkpoints were attacked by “terrorists.” The military said it is establishing a “strong and coherent defense and security belt in the area,” apparently to defend Damascus from the south.
Since the conflict in Syria broke out in March 2011, the Syrian government has referred to opposition armed men as terrorists.
The foreign ministers of Iran, Russia and Turkey would meet in gas-rich Qatar to discuss the situation in Syria. Turkey is one of the main backers of the rebels seeking to overthrow Assad.
Qatar’s top diplomat, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, criticized Assad for failing to take advantage of the lull in the struggle in recent years to address the country’s underlying problems. “Assad has not taken this opportunity to establish and repair his relationship with his people,” he said.
Sheikh Mohammed said he was surprised by the speed at which the rebels were advancing and said there was a real threat to Syria’s “territorial integrity”. He said the war “could damage and destroy what is left if there is no sense of urgency” to initiate a political process.
After the fall of the cities of Daraa and Sweida early Saturday, Syrian government forces maintain control of five provincial capitals: Damascus, Homs and Quneitra, as well as Latakia and Tartus on the Mediterranean coast.
Tartus is home to the only Russian naval base outside the former Soviet Union, while Latakia is home to a major Russian air base.
On Friday, US-backed fighters from the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) captured large parts of the eastern province of Deir el-Zour, which borders Iraq, as well as the provincial capital of the same name. The seizure of areas in Deir el-Zour is a blow to Iranian influence in the region, as the area is the gateway to the corridor connecting the Mediterranean Sea with Iran, a supply line for Iranian-backed fighters including Lebanese Hezbollah.
With the SDF’s capture of a key border crossing with Iraq and after opposition fighters took control of the Naseeb border crossing into Jordan in southern Syria, the Syrian government’s only gateway to the outside world is the Masnaa border crossing with Lebanon.
Margaret Brennan contributed to this report.
