Syria’s armed anti-regime groups captured four new towns early Tuesday, coming closer to the central city of Hama, opposition activists said, as regime forces retook some territory they lost last week.
The capture of the towns is the latest in the push by fighters led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and Türkiye-backed opposition groups. For Ankara, HTS is a terrorist group.
Anti-regime fighters are now about 10 kilometers (6 miles) from Hama, the country’s fourth-largest city.
The latest push is part of a broad offensive by forces opposed to Syrian regime leader Bashar Assad that, over the past days, has captured large parts of the northern city of Aleppo, Syria’s largest, as well as towns and villages in southern parts of the northwestern Idlib province.
The groups’ military operations administration said gunmen killed 50 government forces as they captured the central towns of Halfaya, Taybat al-Imam, Maardis and Soran. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition war monitor, confirmed that the towns were taken.
The pro-government Dama Post media outlet reported intense clashes in and around the towns, adding that Syrian regime troops are firing artillery shells at insurgents in the area. State media reported intense airstrikes by Syrian and Russian air forces in the area.
Both the Observatory and pro-regime media outlets reported that Syrian regime forces on Tuesday captured the village of Khanaser, days after losing it. Khanaser sits on one of the roads that lead to Aleppo.
The long war between Assad and his foreign backers and the array of armed opposition forces seeking his overthrow has killed an estimated half-million people over the past 13 years.
To the east, the PKK terrorist group’s Syrian wing YPG said in a statement that they had captured seven villages from pro-regime fighters. Syrian regime media, however, denied that the villages were captured by the U.S.-backed YPG, saying that the attack was repelled.
The villages are close to a base housing U.S. troops in an area that is close to Iraq.
Also Monday, Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said the recent rapid advance by anti-regime fighters in Syria shows that the Syrian regime’s leader must reconcile with his own people and hold talks with the opposition.
Assad and officials in his regime say all armed groups in opposition-held parts of Syria are terrorists and have rejected any political solution with them.
Türkiye, a main backer of groups opposed to Assad, has been seeking to normalize ties with Syria to address security threats from PKK/YPG terrorists along its southern border and to help ensure the safe return of more than 3 million Syrian refugees. Assad has insisted that Türkiye’s withdrawal of its military forces from northern Syria be a condition for any normalization between the two countries.