Unlock Editor’s Digest for free
FT editor Roula Khalaf has chosen her favorite stories in this weekly newsletter.
Syrian rebels marched across the country on Saturday after seizing cities and parts of territory in a blitzkrieg offensive, advancing on their goal of seizing Damascus and overthrowing the Assad regime.
“Damascus is waiting for you,” Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, leader of the main rebel group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), told fighters on Saturday.
There were reports that rebels had entered the strategic city of Homs late on Saturday, and Reuters quoted a spokesman as saying that the rebels had “completely liberated” Homs. The Syrian army denied that rebels had captured the city.
President Bashar al-Assad’s forces relinquished control of the eastern city of Deir Ezzor and also lost towns in the south as the rebellion expanded to include multiple rebel groups.
“Our forces have begun the final phase of the siege of the capital Damascus,” Abdulghani said on Telegram.
He added that the rebels were sending reinforcements to the “axis” in Damascus, and that the rebels had captured three cities in southern Syria, a military base on the outskirts of Homs and more than a dozen towns and villages. .
There were multiple reports that Syrian soldiers had left areas around Homs and Damascus. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a London-based war monitoring group, announced that regime forces had withdrawn from several towns in the greater Damascus region. The Financial Times was unable to verify these reports.
The multi-pronged attack poses the most serious threat to Assad’s regime in a decade, reigniting a 13-year civil war that has been largely frozen since 2020.
Syrian state media denied that military forces had withdrawn from Damascus suburbs and that Assad had fled. But some residents said they were preparing for the regime to collapse. “It’s over,” said one of the Damascenes.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has long supported some of the Syrian opposition groups, praised on Saturday the “new diplomatic and political reality in Syria.”
In the past, it has helped Iran, President Assad’s main supporter, the Iranian-backed Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, and Russia fight rebel advances. But US Special Envoy Amos Hochstein said on Saturday that the “collapse” of Assad’s forces was accelerating as Assad’s supporters weakened and were distracted by other conflicts.
Assad’s allies are “significantly weaker than before, Russia is in another region and unable to focus its attention on Syria, and Iran is just weaker overall.”
Hochstein added that Iran appears to be “making some withdrawal from Syria.” The New York Times reported that Iranian military commanders have been evacuated.
President-elect Donald Trump warned against U.S. involvement in Syria, arguing in a post on Truth Social that there was “never much to gain” for Russia.
But Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Saturday that Russia stands by its allies and is “making every effort not to allow terrorists to spread, even if they claim they are no longer terrorists.” The Islamist HTS is listed as a terrorist organization by the United States.
Rebels led by HTS and supported by Turkish-backed forces have already captured Syria’s second city, Aleppo, and Hama since launching an offensive 11 days ago.
Homs was the largest city still controlled by the Assad regime, on the main road south to the capital Damascus.
Analysts said the loss of Damascus city would cut it off from Assad’s other large support base in the coastal provinces of Latakia and Tartus. Assad is from the Alawite minority, whose population is concentrated on the coast.
The coastal region is also important to Russia, as it gives Moscow access to the Mediterranean Sea.
Homs is close to the border between Syria and Lebanon, where Hezbollah has a large presence. Iran and Hezbollah’s support for Assad a decade ago helped consolidate the dictator’s rule, but a year of war with Israel has weakened the militant group. HTS urged the Lebanese people not to get drawn into the conflict.
The rebels were also gaining strength south of Damascus, as other rebel groups joined the uprising. HTS claimed that the rebels had captured Deraa, the birthplace of the 2011 Syrian revolution, and the cities of Suwaida and Quneitra, but there were conflicting reports about their control of the territory.
In a sign of the seriousness of the crisis, the Russian government on Friday warned its citizens to prepare to flee Syria. However, an Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson said the Iranian embassy in Damascus had not been evacuated and was operating as usual.
Additional reporting from Najmeh Bozorgmehr in Tehran, Ira Jean Yakly in Istanbul and Andrew England in Doha
