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Islamist-led rebels announced Sunday they had captured the strategic city of Homs, on the way towards Damascus where Syria’s embattled government said it was setting up an impenetrable security cordon.
The defense ministry earlier denied rebels had entered Homs, describing the situation there as “safe and stable.”
But the leader of the Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) group, Ahmed al-Sharaa, said their control over Homs marked a “historic event that will distinguish between truth and falsehood.”
The capture of Homs, Syria’s third-largest city, would cut the seat of power in the capital Damascus from the Mediterranean coast, a key bastion of the Assad clan which has ruled Syria for the past five decades.
Hassan Abdel Ghani, a leading commander of the Islamist-led rebel coalition, said the group’s “operations continue to fully liberate the Damascus countryside.”
“Our eyes are on the capital, Damascus,” he said on Telegram.
Earlier, President Bashar al-Assad’s government denied the army had withdrawn from areas around Damascus.
“A very strong security and military cordon” was being established around the capital “and no one… can penetrate this defensive line that we, the armed forces, are building,” Interior Minister Mohammed al-Rahmoun told state television.
Homs lies about 140 kilometers (85 miles) north of the capital and is the third major city seized by the rebels who began their advance on November 27, reigniting a years-long war that had become largely dormant.
Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, earlier reported rebel factions taking control of some Homs neighborhoods “after the withdrawal of security forces and the army from their last positions in the city.”
Abdel Ghani said the rebels had freed more than 3,500 detainees from the central prison of Homs.
The defense ministry said “armed forces are deployed around the city, positioned in strong defensive lines reinforced with various types of weapons.”
‘Suddenly everyone was scared’
The HTS leader told fighters to prepare to take the capital.
“Damascus awaits you,” he said on Telegram, using his real name instead of his nom de guerre, Abu Mohammed al-Jolani.
