Daraa-based opposition forces say they have seized control of the southern city, the fourth strategically important city President Bashar al-Assad’s forces have lost in a week.
Sources said the military has agreed to make an orderly withdrawal from Daraa under a deal giving army officials safe passage to the capital, Damascus, about 100km (60 miles) north.
Daraa was dubbed “the cradle of the revolution” early in Syria’s war as government repression of protests failed to quell the people’s anger after the government detained and tortured a group of boys for scribbling anti-al-Assad graffiti on their school walls in 2011. In April of that year, regime forces besieged the city, a move seen as having militarized the revolution.
On Friday evening, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor said local factions had taken control of more than 90 percent of Daraa province, including the eponymous city.
In neighboring Sweida, the Syrian Observatory and local media said the governor, the police and prison chiefs, and the local Baath party leaders had left their offices as local fighters took control of several checkpoints.
Sweida is the heartland of Syria’s Druze minority and has witnessed anti-government demonstrations for more than a year, as the cost of living shot upwards and tens of thousands of Druze men refused to undertake compulsory military service.
Losing ground
“Our forces operating in Daraa and Sweida are redeploying and repositioning, and establishing a… security cordon in that direction after terrorist elements attacked remote army checkpoints,” the General Command of the Army and Armed Forces said in a statement carried by state media on Saturday .
The army’s statement added it was “beginning to regain control in Homs and Hama provinces” as Al Jazeera’s Zeina Khodr reported from Lebanon that Syrian and Russian air strikes hit north Homs in the early hours of Saturday morning.
Hama fell to opposition fighters on Thursday as they advanced southwards towards Homsfive days after they took the second-largest city of Aleppo.
“[Opposition forces] are now at the gates of Homs,” said Khodr, who is following developments from the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon.
“They have repeated a call to government troops to surrender and avoid battle,” she reported. “This could indicate that the government intends to put up a fight.”
“It’s unclear whether or not they can hold on to Homs, a strategic city at the crossroads between Damascus and the regime’s heartlands along the coast.”
Since a rebel alliance led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) launched its lightning offensive on November 27, the government has steadily lost ground.
As the army and its Iranian-backed militia allies pulled out of Deir az Zor in eastern Syria, Kurdish-led forces said on Friday they had crossed the Euphrates River and taken control of the territory that had been vacated.
Never in the war had al-Assad’s forces lost control of so many key cities in such a short space of time.
Diplomatic push
Turkiye’s Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan is set to meet with his Russian and Iranian counterparts in Doha on Saturday to seek a solution to the renewed fighting in Syria and prevent chaos on its borders.
The three countries have been partners since 2017 in the Astana process seeking to end the war in Syria, even as they support opposite sides on the battlefield.
Moscow and Tehran supported al-Assad in crushing the opposition while Ankara supported various rebel movements and views their recent advances favorably.
“[D]“iplomacy now may focus on working out an exit option for the regime and ensuring an orderly transition,” Berkay Mandiraci, a senior Turkiye analyst at the International Crisis Group told Al Jazeera.
“The unexpected rebel advances… came at a time when the regime’s main backers – Russia and Iranian proxies – have been bogged down in other conflict theatres,” Mandiraci added.
On Friday, Syrian Foreign Minister Bassam Sabbagh met in Baghdad with his Iraqi and Iranian counterparts, warning that the offensive threatens regional stability.
Iraqi Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein condemned the offensive, and said Iraq “cannot be part of any war.”
Syria’s civil war has killed more than 500,000 people and forced more than half the population to flee their homes.
