Moscow and Washington urge their citizens to leave Syria // Iran evacuates its military personnel

AFP, Reuters and Sputnik

La Jornada Newspaper
Saturday, December 7, 2024, p. 19

Beirut. Jihadist fighters advanced on the city of Homs yesterday and forced Syrian government forces to withdraw from the city, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (OSDH) reported, although the claim was later denied by the country’s army.

Our forces liberated the last village on the outskirts of the city of Homs and are now at its wallsthe Hayat Tahrir al Sham (HTS) faction reported on Telegram.

The objective of the lightning offensive is overthrow the regime of the Syrian president, Bashar al Assad, reported the head of the HTS group, Abu Mohamed al Jolani. We have the right to use all available means to achieve this goalJolani added to CNN in an interview.

In addition, the Islamist organization, a former affiliate of Al Qaeda, made a final call to the Assad government forces in Homs to defect.

The United States and Russia called on their citizens to leave the country. Washington urged them to do so now that commercial flights are still availableaccording to an alert note published by the State Department.

Iran has begun evacuating officials and military personnel from Syria, the New York Times.

The Battle of Homs is the mother of all battles and will decide who will rule Syriasaid Rami Abdurrahman, director of the OSDH, who also reported air attacks against a strategic highway bridge between Hama and Homs, about 150 kilometers from the capital Damascus.

On another front, the Syrian army announced that with the help of Syrian and Russian fighter planes it captured terrorist vehicles and groups in Hama.

Syrian state television reported that at least 200 members of the HTS group were killed in Russian-Syrian airstrikes against its headquarters in Hama, Idlib and Aleppo, after citing the Russian coordination center in Syria.

In Hama, journalists from the AFP news outlet saw people tear off and tow away with a vehicle the head of a statue of Hafez al Assad, father and predecessor of the current Syrian president, Bashar al Assad.

At press time, HTS fighters captured positions in the city of Daraa, capital of the country’s homonymous province, as confirmed by multiple sources to local media and the Turkish Anadolu agency.

Kurdish front backed by Türkiye advances

In a parallel setback for Assad, a U.S.-backed alliance led by Syrian Kurdish fighters seized Deir el-Zor, the government’s main stronghold in Syria’s vast eastern desert, three sources told Reuters.

Idlib, Hama, Homs and of course, the objective: Damascus. The advance of the opponents continues. We hope that this progress continues without incidentsaid the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

At least 370,000 people have left their homes in Syria since the beginning of the crisis, said the spokesman for the UN Secretary General, Stéphane Dujarric, while UN humanitarian agencies fear that an increase in war operations in Syria will cause displacement. of 1.5 million people.

Meanwhile, Baghdad, Damascus and Tehran will coordinate their actions to be prepared for the possible future in Syria, according to a statement after a meeting of the foreign ministers of the three countries in the Iraqi capital, while ruling parties and Iraqi Shiite Muslim armed groups are weighing the pros and cons of an armed intervention in Syria, because they consider the advance of pro-Turkish attackers a threat.