Syrian rebels have reached the suburbs of Damascus as part of a rapidly moving offensive that has seen them take over some of the country’s largest cities, according to opposition activists and a rebel commander.
It would be the first time that opposition forces have reached the outskirts of the capital since 2018, when Syrian troops recaptured the region adjacent to Damascus following a years-long siege.
Rami Abdurrahman, who heads the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition war monitor, said insurgents were active in the Damascus suburbs of Maadamiyah, Jaramana and Daraya on Saturday.
A commander with the insurgents, Hassan Abdul-Ghani, posted on the Telegram messaging app that opposition forces have started carrying out the “final stage” of their offensive by encircling Damascus. He added that insurgents were headed from southern Syria toward the city.
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The rebels, led by the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) militant group, earlier said they had reached the edge of the central city of Homs as government forces attempted to buttress collapsing front lines and preserve Bashar al-Assad’s 24-year rule. Syria’s state news agency denied rumours that Assad has left the country, saying he is at work in Damascus.
The leader of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, a former al Qaeda affiliate, said in a video message on Saturday that the rebels were “in the final moments of liberating” Homs.
Since the rebels’ sweep into Aleppo a week ago, government defences have crumbled across the country at dizzying speed as insurgents rose up in places where the rebellion had long seemed over. Besides capturing Aleppo in the north, Hama in the centre and Deir al-Zor in the east, rebels took contol of Suweida and Deraa.
Syria’s military said it was carrying out air strikes around Hama and Homs and reinforcing on that front. It also said it was repositioning around Deraa and Suweida, without acknowledging their capture by rebels.
Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov said on Saturday it was inadmissible to allow what he called a terrorist group to take control of Syrian lands. He was speaking in Doha, Qatar after meeting the Turkish and Iranian foreign ministers.
Russia, a long-term ally of Syria, intervened in 2015 to prop up Damascus during Syria’s civil war, which began in 2011. It maintains a military presence in Syria, including a naval base and airbases in the cities of Tartus and Latakia, in the coastal region that is a stronghold of Assad’s Alawite sect.
Mr Lavrov said Russia would “help the Syrian army to counter the attacks of terrorists”.
The UN’s special envoy for Syria, Geir Pedersen, called for urgent talks to ensure an “orderly political transition”.
Speaking to reporters at the annual Doha Forum, he said the talks in Geneva, Switzerland would discuss the implementation of a UN resolution that called for a Syrian-led political process. Resolution 2254, adopted in 2015, called for the establishment of a transitional governing body, followed by the drafting of a new constitution and ending with UN-supervised elections.
The pace of events in Syria has stunned Arab capitals, western officials say, raising their fears of a fresh wave of regional instability.
Syria's civil war, which erupted in 2011 as an uprising against Assad's rule, dragged in big outside powers, created space for jihadist militants to plot attacks around the world and sent millions of refugees into neighbouring states.
Assad had long relied on allies to subdue the rebels, with Russian warplanes bombing from the skies while Iran sent allied forces including Lebanon’s Hizbullah and Iraqi militia to bolster the Syrian military and storm insurgent strongholds.
But Russia has been focused on the war in Ukraine since 2022 and Hizbullah’s leadership has been decimated this year in its own gruelling war with Israel.
Hizbullah sent some “supervising forces” to Homs on Friday but any significant deployment would risk exposure to Israeli air strikes, western officials said. Israel attacked two Lebanon-Syria border crossings on Friday, Lebanon said.
Iran-backed Iraqi militias are on high alert, with thousands of heavily armed fighters ready to deploy to Syria, many of them amassed near the border. But they have not yet been ordered to cross, two of their commanders said. Iraq does not seek military intervention in Syria, a government spokesman said on Friday.
Qatar’s minister for foreign affairs Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani said there had been no serious effort by Assad to reconcile with his own people and that civil war threatened Syria’s territorial integrity. – Reuters