Beirut:
Syrian government forces have lost control of the city of Daraa, a war monitor said. This is another stunning blow to President Bashar al-Assad’s rule, after rebels wrested other key cities from his grip.
Daraa was dubbed “the cradle of revolution” early in Syria’s civil war after activists accused the government of detaining and torturing a group of boys for scrawling anti-Assad graffiti on their school walls in 2011.
While Aleppo and Hama, the two other major cities that have escaped government control in recent days, fell to an Islamist-led rebel alliance, Daraa was captured by local armed groups, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
“Local factions have taken control of more areas in Daraa province, including the city of Daraa… they now control more than 90 percent of the province, while regime forces have successively withdrawn,” the British-based Observatory said , which relies on a network of sources around Syria, said late Friday.
Daraa province borders Jordan.
Despite a ceasefire brokered by Assad ally Russia, the province has been plagued by unrest in recent years, with frequent attacks, clashes and killings.
Waves of violence
Syria’s civil war, which began with Assad’s crackdown on anti-democracy protests, has killed more than 500,000 people and forced more than half the population to flee their homes.
Never before in the war had Assad’s forces lost control of so many key cities in such a short time.
Since a rebel alliance led by Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) launched its offensive on November 27, the government has lost the second city of Aleppo and then Hama in central Syria.
The rebels stood at the gates of Homs, Syria’s third-largest city, on Friday as the government withdrew its troops from Deir Ezzor in the east.
In an interview published Friday, HTS leader Abu Mohammed al-Jolani said the aim of the offensive was to overthrow Assad.
“If we talk about objectives, the goal of the revolution remains the overthrow of this regime. It is our right to use all available means to achieve that goal,” Jolani told CNN.
HTS is rooted in the Syrian branch of Al Qaeda. The organization, which has been designated a terrorist organization by Western governments, has tried to soften its image in recent years.
Sudden withdrawal
As the army and its Iran-backed militia allies withdrew from Deir Ezzor in eastern Syria, Kurdish-led forces said they had crossed the Euphrates River and taken control of the vacated territory.
The Observatory said government forces and their allies “suddenly” withdrew from the east and headed towards the oasis city of Palmyra on the desert road to Homs.
The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, which are backed by the United States, have expressed willingness for dialogue with both Turkey and the rebels, saying the offensive heralds a “new” political reality for Syria.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken called for a “political solution to the conflict” and the protection of civilians and minorities, his spokesman said in a call with Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan on Friday.
The rebels launched their offensive on the same day a ceasefire took effect in neighboring Lebanon in the war between Israel and Hezbollah.
The Lebanese group has been a key ally of Assad, alongside Russia and Iran.
Turkey, which has backed the opposition, said it will hold talks with Russia and Iran in Qatar this weekend.
Ahead of the talks, the foreign ministers of Iran, Iraq and Syria met in Baghdad, where Syrian Bassam al-Sabbagh accused the government’s enemies of trying to “redraw the political map.”
Iran’s Abbas Araghchi promised to provide Assad’s government with “whatever (support) is needed.”
But Tehran has begun to withdraw its military commanders and personnel, including some diplomatic staff, from Syria, the New York Times reported Friday, citing unnamed regional officials and three Iranian officials.
Fear
In Homs, the scene of some of the war’s deadliest violence, tens of thousands of members of Assad’s Alawite minority fled in fear of the rebel advance, residents and the Britain-based Observatory said.
Syrians forced to leave the country years ago by the initial crackdown on the uprising were glued to their phones as they watched the current developments unfold.
“We have been dreaming about this for more than a decade,” said Yazan, a 39-year-old former activist now living in France.
When asked if he was concerned about HTS’s Islamist agenda, he said: “I don’t care who is carrying this out. The devil himself could be behind it. What people care about is who is going to liberate the country.”
On the other side of the sectarian divide, Haidar, 37, who lives in an Alawite-majority neighborhood, told AFP by phone that “fear is the umbrella that now covers Homs.”
‘Our joy is indescribable’
The army shelled the advancing rebels while Syrian and Russian aircraft struck from the air. At least twenty civilians, including five children, were killed in the bombing, the war monitor said.
At least 826 people, mostly fighters but also 111 civilians, have been killed since the offensive began last week, according to Observatory figures. According to the United Nations, 280,000 people have been displaced by the violence.
Many of the scenes of the past few days would have been unthinkable earlier in the war.
In Hama, an AFP photographer saw residents setting fire to a giant poster of Assad on the facade of the city hall.
“Our joy is indescribable, and we wish this for every honorable Syrian to experience these happy moments that we have been deprived of since birth,” said Ghiath Suleiman, a resident of Hama.
Online footage verified by AFP showed residents toppling a statue of Assad’s father Hafez, under whose brutal rule the army carried out a massacre in the city in the 1980s.
(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)