Syria Rebels Say Encircling Damascus As Government Denies Falling Back

Damascus: Rebels on a lightning advance through Syria said on Saturday they have begun to encircle Damascus as government forces denied they had withdrawn from areas near the capital.

“Our forces have begun the final phase of encircling the capital, Damascus,” said rebel commander Hassan Abdel Ghani, with the Islamist-led alliance that launched the offensive.

The defence ministry flatly denied the army had fled positions near the city.

“There is no truth to news claiming our armed forces, present in all areas of the Damascus countryside, have withdrawn,” it said.

Earlier, a war monitor and Abdel Ghani said rebels were within 20 kilometres of Damascus as government forces fall back in the face of the offensive gathering even more momentum.

The Syria Observatory for Human Rights said government forces had ceded more key ground, losing control of all of southern Daraa province and evacuating posts in Quneitra, near the Israel-annexed Golan Heights.

The monitor said government forces were also pulling out of towns as little as 10 kilometres (six miles) from Damascus.

Abdel Ghani said earlier that “our forces were able to control the Saasaa (security) branch in the Damascus countryside. The advance towards the capital continues.”

Air strikes and shelling by government forces and their ally Russia killed at least seven civilians near the city of Homs, as the army sought to slow the rebel advance there.

The astounding rebel gains have brought the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and its allies to the doorstep of President Bashar al-Assad’s seat of power, just over a week into a renewed offensive in a conflict that had long seemed frozen.

As the rebels seize more territory, they have also sought to reassure those living in areas now under their control.

Abdel Ghani in a statement on Telegram Saturday recognised that the rebels had taken areas where “different religious sects and minorities” live.

“We ask that all sects be reassured… for the era of sectarianism and tyranny has gone away forever,” he said.

Minorities have often been persecuted during Syria’s long conflict, and HTS’s precursor Al-Nusra Front, which was linked to Al-Qaeda, launched deadly attacks on Assad’s Alawite minority in Homs early in the war.

The army said it was redeploying in the south where the Observatory said the government had lost control of Daraa province and the key city of the same name, cradle of the 2011 uprising.

An AFP correspondent in Daraa saw local fighters guarding public property and civil institutions on Saturday.

In the central Homs area, a key stepping stone to the seat of power in Damascus, the Observatory said government forces had brought “large reinforcements” and stopped the rebel advance.

An army statement carried by state media said government forces were “redeploying and repositioning” in the southern provinces of Sweida and Daraa.

But both the Observatory and rebels said that government forces no longer controlled any of Daraa province.

After the rebels seized Aleppo and Hama, Daraa was taken by local armed groups, the Britain-based monitor said.

In nearby Quneitra province, government forces “evacuated military and security positions while civil servants left their posts, leaving the province… free of the Syrian army for the very first time”, said Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman.