ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - The Syrian army on Thursday announced its withdrawal from the strategic central city of Hama after days of fighting with the Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham-led (HTS) rebels.
The army said in a statement that following clashes in Hama, the rebels were able to “infiltrate several fronts,” pushing the army to withdraw outside the city.
“In order to protect the lives of the people in Hama and not to involve them in battles inside the cities, the military units stationed there redeployed and repositioned themselves outside the city,” said a statement from the Syrian army.
The army admitted that “many” of its soldiers were killed in the clashes.
“Your revolutionary and mujaheed brothers have started entering the city of Hama, to clean the wound that has continued in Syria for over the past 40 years,” HTS leader Abu Mohammed al-Jolani said in a video message.
Jolani said that there will be “no revenge” in the capture of Hama.
According to HTS-affiliated media, rebel forces entered the Hama central prison and freed the inmates, labeling them as “oppressed prisoners.”
This comes a day after the HTS surrounded the city from three sides.
A coalition of Syrian rebels led by HTS launched a blistering offensive against the Syrian army over the past week. They took control of the northern city of Aleppo, the largest in the country, and later advanced their offensive into Hama province.
The United Nations on Wednesday estimated that over 115,000 people have been displaced in Idlib and Aleppo by the renewed clashes.
Syrians rose against the Assad regime in 2011, leading to a full-scale civil war that has claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of people, left millions more in dire need of humanitarian assistance, and left much of the country’s infrastructure in ruins.
More than 13 million Syrians, half the country’s pre-war population, have been displaced since the start of the civil war, more than 6 million of whom are refugees who have fled the war-torn country, according to United Nations figures.
