Syrian opposition forces claim to have taken control of the cities of Daraa and As Suwayda in the southwest of the country and are closing in on the capital, Damascus.
This is reported by CNN.
It was in the city of Daraa that the Syrian uprising began in 2011. Al Arabiya TV channel released footage of the withdrawal of Bashar al-Assadʼs army from Daraa.
Militants are fighting against the regime from two directions: from the north and the south. Hayat Tahrir al-Sham is fighting in the north. The group has already captured two major cities during the offensive.
According to CNN, in the south of Syria, the rebels took control of Nasib, a strategic border crossing between Syria and Jordan. It is the southernmost point of the main M5 highway that leads from Aleppo to Damascus.
Assadʼs forces announced that they are carrying out airstrikes on Hama and Homs and seem to be strengthening their positions on this front. They added that they are redeploying around the cities of Daraa and As Suwayda, without admitting that these cities have been captured by the rebels, writes Reuters.
Due to President Assadʼs inability to retain power, Iran has begun evacuating its diplomats from the country, The New York Times reports. Some flew to Tehran, others went by ground transport to Lebanon, Iraq and the Syrian port of Latakia.
At the same time, according to the Wall Street Journal, Egypt and Jordan offer Bashar Assad to form a temporary council, whose members could become members of the opposition. The Jordanian Embassy in the US has not confirmed this information.
What preceded
Active clashes between the rebels and Syrian troops began on November 27. The offensive was launched by the Syrian Revolutionary Forces in "response to months of continuous attacks on civilians" by the Assad regime in Aleppo province. It was the heaviest fighting in northwest Syria since 2020, when government forces seized areas previously controlled by opposition fighters. It is also the largest attack by opposition fighters on the city since they were pushed out of the eastern districts in 2016.
On November 30, the Syrian Armed Forces declared a "temporary withdrawal" from Aleppo to prepare a counteroffensive against opposition groups. As early as December 1, the media reported that the Assadʼs Forces had lost control of Aleppo — for the first time since the beginning of the military conflict that began more than ten years ago. Later, it became known that the Assad regime had lost the city of Hama, the fifth largest city in the country.
The Ukrainian intelligence says that Russian troops are suffering losses during the fighting in Syria. Against this background, the Russian Federation changed the commander of forces in the region — he became General Oleksandr Chaiko, who commanded a group of Russian troops in Syria in 2017-2019. GUR noted that it currently knows about "hundreds" of Russians who are considered missing there.
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