By Deutsche Welle
04 Dec 2024, 08:49 AM EST
The Syrian Army this Wednesday expanded its security zone around the strategic northern city of Hama after violent fighting with Islamist groups, while the Syrian Kurdish alliance repelled an attack by “Turkish mercenaries” in its area of influence east of the Euphrates River.
According to the official Syrian agency SANA, Bashar Al Assad’s Army “continued its operations against the positions and axes of movement of terrorist organizations in the northern outskirts of Hama” and managed to “expand the security zone of the city by about 20 kilometers”, in a series of attacks that managed to “eliminate several terrorists and destroy their vehicles.”
Hama, capital of a province of the same name through which the strategic M5 highway runs, which is the backbone of the country from north to south, is being the new target of the Islamist alliance of the Levant Liberation Organization (Hayat Tahrir al Sham or HTS, in Arabic) which already managed to take large territories in the northwest of the Arab country in the offensive it launched on November 27.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, based in the United Kingdom but with a wide network of collaborators on the ground in both pro-government and insurgent-dominated areas, reported this Wednesday that the HTS and its allies “failed” in their attempts to dominate Mount Jabal Zein al Abedin, very close to Hama capital.
Furthermore, according to the Observatory, the Syrian Army launched a counterattack this morning in which it managed to regain control of the towns of Kafraa and Marshahour, northeast of Hama, and force the insurgents to withdraw “up to 10 kilometers” from the city.
Both local Syrian media and the Observatory have reported that military reinforcements and local armed groups have arrived in the northern peripheries.east and west of Hama to support the Army, including several students from the Aleppo Military Academy, who with Russian help managed to escape after being surrounded for several days by HTS forces.