Jihadists and rebels allied with them surrounded the city yesterday Wednesday Hamain central Syria, a week after they launched a lightning attack based on the north, with the Syrian armed forces trying to push them back.

Within a week, to everyone’s surprise, the rebels had captured most of Aleppo, the country’s second largest urban center, and continued their advance towards Hama, city ​​of strategic importance for the president’s regime Bashar al-Assadjust 200 kilometers from the capital Damascus.

The hostilities, which have killed at least 704 people, including 110 civilians, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, are the first of this scale since 2020 in Syria, where civil war broke out in 2011.

Rebels surrounded Hama on “three sides” yesterday, said the Britain-based NGO, which has a wide network of sources in Syria.

They reached “three to four kilometers from the city, after heavy clashes” and now government forces “have only one escape route from Homs, to the south”, always according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

“Last night, the bangs were terrifying, we could clearly hear the incessant shelling,” said Wasim, a driver, 36, who lives in Hama. “We have been on the verge of a nervous breakdown for four days,” he added.

“I watch the news day and night, I don’t take my cellphone out of my hands,” said the 22-year-old student, who left her university in Damascus to join her family in Hama when the attack began.

Government forces have been conducting a counter-attack since yesterday, with air support, and have sent “large military convoys” to Hama and its surroundings, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

“Fierce fighting” was taking place yesterday between the army, closely supported by Syrian and Russian jets, and pro-regime fighters in the northern part of the Hamas province of the same name, a military source told the official SANA news agency.

There is a risk of “serious violations” with civilian casualties, warned the non-governmental organization Human Rights Watch (Human Rights Watch, HRW). Both sides have been accused of human rights violations.

The German Agency also announced the death of its award-winning photojournalist, Anas Alharbutli, in an aerial bombardment near Hama.

In Suran, about 20 kilometers north of the city, civilians fled, crammed into whatever vehicles they could find, while pro-government forces, brandishing weapons, patrolled in vans.

Hama was the scene of a massacre committed by the army in 1982, during the days of current president Bashar al-Assad’s father in power, to quell a Muslim Brotherhood uprising.

It was also where some of the largest demonstrations demanding the democratization of the country took place in 2011, the suppression of which was a trigger for the war.

David Carden, the UN’s assistant coordinator for humanitarian affairs in Syria, said yesterday that more than 115,000 people had been displaced in a week.

Kurdish authorities, who control parts of northeastern Syria, yesterday made an “urgent” appeal for humanitarian aid as “large numbers” of displaced people arrive there.

“Our situation is very difficult. We left yesterday with our children, we are exhausted, the conditions are very difficult,” said Abdo, a Syrian Kurd who fled Aleppo and fled to Tabqa, further east.

Russia and Iran, key allies of Damascus, and Turkey, a key backer of some rebel groups, are in “close contact” to stabilize the situation, Russian diplomacy said.

Syria, where the war has claimed the lives of more than half a million people, remains today divided into zones of influence, where the warring parties are supported by various foreign powers.

The attack launched on November 27 by an alliance dominated by the radical Islamist organization Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS, al-Qaeda’s former Syrian arm), ended the relative calm in northwestern Syria since 2020.

For the first time since the outbreak of the war, Damascus has completely lost control of Aleppo, a city that was once the heart of the Syrian economy. This defeat was described as extremely painful for the regime of President Bashar al-Assad.

HTS leader Abu Mohammad al-Jolani went to the Aleppo fortress yesterday, as announced by his alliance via Telegram. Pictures capture him greeting his fans from a car.

Meanwhile, President Assad announced a 50% increase in the salaries of career soldiers.

Thanks mainly to the military support of Moscow and Tehran, Damascus launched a counteroffensive in 2015 that allowed it to gradually regain control of most of the country and in 2016 full control of Aleppo, part of which had been in the hands of anti-regime forces since 2012 .

For Reem Turkmani, a researcher at the London School of Economics, the advance of the anti-regime forces at a rapid pace does not necessarily mean that they will be able to maintain control of the territories they conquered. “I think they will realize very quickly that they are beyond their capabilities to hold these areas and, what is even more important, to govern them,” he stressed.

US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, for his part, warned yesterday against the re-emergence of the Islamic State (IS), the jihadist organization that had declared the establishment of a “caliphate” in vast areas of Syria and Iraq in 2014 and needed years of military operations to defeat. .