December 8, 2024
Rebels say they have entered Damascus
Syrian rebel groups said they entered the capital, Damascus, in the early hours of Sunday morning.
“Our forces started entering Damascus,” the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) said on Telegram.
The announcement comes hours after rebels claimed to have captured Syria’s third-largest city, Homs, to the north.
Residents in Damascus said they could hear gunfire, news agencies AFP and Reuters reported.
Sources from the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights also told AFP that government forces had withdrawn from Damascus International Airport on the outskirts of the city.
https://p.dw.com/p/4nsdU
December 8, 2024
Rebel forces take Homs
Forces of the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) entered the suburbs of Syria’s third city of Homs overnight while President Bashar Assad’s forces have largely pulled back from the city.
“The process of advancing and combing the city’s neighborhoods is currently under way, ” Ahmed al-Sharaa, the leader of HTS, said in a video on Telegram.
“We are currently living the final moments of liberating Homs,” al-Sharaa added.
Pro-government radio station Sham FM said government forces had taken up positions outside the city, without providing any more details.
News agency Reuters cited a Syrian army officer, who it did not name, as saying that units of Lebanese group Hezbollah’s elite Radwan forces had left the city of Homs.
Meanwhile, HTS commander Hassan Abdul-Ghani claimed his forces had freed more than 3,500 prisoners in the city on Saturday. .
“Our forces … have succeeded in freeing more than 3,500 prisoners from the prison … in Homs,” he said.
He said his forces had already begun the “final stage” of their advance by moving to surround Damascus.
zc/dvv (Reuters, AFP, AP, dpa)
