(Bloomberg) — Syrian rebels have entered Homs, a war monitor said, in a swift advance on the last city before the capital Damascus and a major threat to President Bashar al-Assad’s rule.
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If the city falls it would effectively cut the shortest land route between the Syrian capital and the Mediterranean coast, where a key Russian base is located at Tartus. The advance was reported by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which tracks the conflict.
Homs is just a two-hour drive away from Assad’s palace in Damascus. The government said earlier Saturday that Assad was continuing to run the country from the capital as speculation swirled regarding his whereabouts.
If Homs falls to the control of rebel fighters it would be the greatest threat to the president’s regime since 2015, when Russia and Iran came to his aid and helped turn the tide in Syria’s war.
The capture of Homs “could seriously threaten Assad’s rule,” Serhat Erkmen, director of the Pros&Cons Security and Risk Analysis Center based in Ankara, said last week. It’s much more critical than Hama, which the rebels seized on Dec. 5.
Assad has lost authority over large swaths of the northwest of the country in the past week, as opposition fighters made a shock advance out of Idlib province. They first captured Aleppo, one of the biggest cities in Syria, and then advanced on Hama.
The rapid collapse of the Syrian government’s defenses has taken Russia, Iran, the US and Israel all by surprise. Tehran and Moscow’s next moves will be crucial in determining whether Assad can beat back an assault on Damascus and ensure his government’s survival.
Yet, unlike in 2015, both Iran and Russia are stretched by conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine.
The Syrian conflict, which began in 2011, so far has left between 300,000 to 500,000 people dead, more than 7 million internally displaced and at least 6.4 million as refugees, according to United Nations agencies and Syrian organizations.
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