CNN
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Syria’s military mentioned it’s withdrawing from Hama, a symbolic and strategically essential central metropolis, marking a second main achieve for a newly fashioned insurgent coalition that additionally captured Aleppo final week.
“Over the previous few hours, with the intensification of confrontations between our troopers and terrorist teams and the rise of quite a lot of martyrs in our ranks, these teams had been capable of penetrate a number of elements of the town and entered it,” the Syrian army mentioned in an announcement carried by state information outlet SANA.
Aleppo, Syria’s second-largest metropolis, was recaptured final week by insurgent teams after a shock offensive overran President Bashar al-Assad’s forces and allied militias.
The offensive was a significant setback for Assad and his backers in Iran and Russia, and has reignited a civil warfare that had been largely dormant for years.
Hama is strategically situated at a key crossroads in western-central Syria, offering direct provide strains between the capital Damascus and Aleppo. Rebels had been unable to seize the town because the Syrian civil warfare started in 2011.
Abu Mohammad Al Jolani, the chief of Hayat Tahrir Al Sham (HTS) – the principle insurgent group main the offensive – mentioned his forces entered Hama to “cleanse a 40-year-old wound.”
The metropolis holds symbolic significance because it was the location of one of many nation’s largest and most brutal massacres in 1982, when President Hafez al-Assad – the present ruler’s father – ordered his army to quash a revolt. A 1983 Amnesty International report put the dying toll on either side as between 10,000 and 25,000.
The rebels vowed to advance additional south, to the town of Homs, one other main metropolis about 165 kilometers (100 miles) from the capital Damascus.
“Our heroic folks in Homs, your time has come. Declare it a revolution towards oppression and tyranny,” mentioned Hassan Abdulghani, the spokesperson for the rebels.
Syria’s civil warfare started through the 2011 Arab Spring as the federal government suppressed an rebellion towards Assad, who has been president since 2000. The nation plunged right into a full-scale civil warfare because the protests became an armed rebel.
Hama was the location of a number of the first protests towards the Syrian regime through the Arab Spring.
This is a growing story and can be up to date.
