The Syrian military has rushed reinforcements into the Hama province, in a bid to push back insurgents who are advancing into the area after seizing Aleppo.
The rebels, led by the Salafi jihadi group, Hayat Tahrir al Sham, took over most of Syria’s second-largest city on Saturday and claim to have also entered the city of Hama.
The reinforcements include air strikes from Syrian and Russian jets, and the arrival of personnel with equipment such as rocket launchers in the northern Hama countryside, the Syrian defence ministry said in a post on Facebook.
The warplanes are “intensifying their precise strikes on the axes of movement of the fleeing terrorists achieving direct hits and killing and wounding dozens of them,” it said.
They have also struck in Idlib and images from the city show a vehicle on fire, as well as dust and debris covering a street.
Russia has long been a key ally for Syria’s President Bashar al Assad and helped him regain control over the country in 2016, following an uprising that began in 2011.
The military action comes after Syria’s Mr Assad said his country will “defend its stability and territorial integrity”.
In his first public comments since the start of the offensive, late on Saturday night he said the regime would defeat the “terrorists and their supporters”.
In comments released by the state news agency SANA, he added that Syria is able to defeat them no matter how much their attacks intensify.
On Saturday thousands of insurgents took over most of Aleppo, controlling its airport before expanding their shock offensive to a nearby province.
They faced little to no resistance from government troops, according to fighters and activists.
Thousands of fighters also seized towns and villages in northern Hama, a province where they had a presence before being expelled by government troops in 2016.
The swift and surprise offensive is a huge embarrassment for Mr Assad, and raises questions about his armed forces’ preparedness.
The insurgents, including Turkey-backed fighters, launched their shock offensive on Wednesday.
They first staged a two-pronged attack in Aleppo and the Idlib countryside, entering Aleppo two days later.
By Saturday evening, they had seized at least four towns in the central Hama province and claimed to have entered the provincial capital.
At least 327 people, including 44 civilians, have been killed since the operation started on Wednesday, the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said.
Thousands of people have also reportedly been displaced after the escalation in violence.
Syria’s armed forces said on Saturday that insurgents had entered large parts Aleppo but claimed they had not established bases or checkpoints.
Russia’s defence ministry said its air force had carried out strikes on Syrian rebels in support of the country’s army, Russian news agencies reported.
The state-run Russian Centre for the Reconciliation of the Enemy Parties in Syria said the missile and bomb strikes had targeted “militant concentrations, command posts, depots, and artillery positions” in Aleppo and Idlib provinces. It claimed about 300 rebel fighters had been killed.
The strikes followed what was the boldest rebel assault for years in a civil war where front lines had largely been frozen since 2020.
The long-simmering Syrian civil war, which has killed hundreds of thousands of people and displaced many millions, has ground on since, with no formal end in sight.
By Skynews
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