Syrian insurgents fighting forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad have launched attacks in the central province of Hama, threatening to cut off government troops from a key route linking the capital, Damascus, with rebel-held Aleppo.
The army was engaging in “violent confrontations” with armed groups in Hama, the Syrian state news agency Sana reported.
Insurgents said they were positioned about 6 miles from Hama city, the country’s fourth largest city, and that their forces had captured the towns of Maardis and Soran just north of the city.
Separately, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a longtime independent war monitor, said on Tuesday morning that rebel factions in the province had managed to seize several towns in the last few hours.
“Syrian and Russian air forces carried out dozens of strikes on the area,” said the Britain-based monitor, which has a network of sources inside Syria.
After their lightning assault on Aleppo over the past few days, militants led by the Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) have advanced south towards Hama. The city sits on a critical road linking Aleppo in the north with major central locations such as Homs city, the coastal ports of Latakia and Tartous, and Damascus in the south.
Hama was a bastion of opposition to the Assad government when pro-democracy protests first erupted during the Arab spring in 2011. A bloody response by security forces to peaceful marches across the country led the opposition to arm itself, and a years-long civil war ensued.
Since retaking Aleppo in 2016, Assad has regained a tight grip over the country, although he has never fully retaken all of Syria’s borders. The sudden insurgent victory in Aleppo is the most serious challenge to the dictator’s control in years.
Iran, Assad’s most significant backer, said on Tuesday that it would consider sending troops to Syria if requested by Damascus. Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, said the “expansion of the activities of terrorist groups in Syria” could further destabilise the region.
Tehran has become increasingly alarmed that some of its key supply lines to its allied militia in Lebanon and Iraq could be threatened by the spread of the Syria conflict.
Syria has become a proxy battleground for international power struggles, with Russia and Iran supporting Assad while Turkey and the US have backed various rebel groups. Insurgents propped up by Turkey have engaged in the most recent assault on Aleppo.
Meanwhile, Israel, to the south, regularly bombs Iranian, Syrian and Lebanese militia in Syria. On Tuesday the Israeli military confirmed that its forces had killed Salman Jumaa, a senior figure from the Lebanese group Hezbollah, in Damascus. Jumaa was responsible for liaising with the Syrian army.
Several hundred miles to the east of Hama and Aleppo, fighters from a US-backed, Kurdish-led coalition battled government forces early on Tuesday, opening a new front for Assad’s military. The fighting by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) was reported in villages across the Euphrates River from Deir ez-Zur, a regional capital.
A US official, speaking on condition of anonymity to Reuters, said Washington had carried out at least one strike in “self-defence” in Deir ez-Zur, which they said was unrelated to the Aleppo offensive. Washington maintains a small number of troops at a base in a gas field in the Deir ez-Zur province. The region also has a presence of Islamic State militants, whom US troops have been fighting since 2014.
The UN high commissioner for human rights, Volker Türk, voiced concern on Tuesday about the escalation of hostilities in north-west Syria. Medics have reported intensive aerial attacks by Syrian and Russian jets.
Türk’s office said it had documented “a number of extremely concerning incidents resulting in multiple civilian casualties, including a high number of women and children,” from attacks by HTS and pro-government forces.
The UN says nearly 50,000 people have been displaced by the fighting that has killed hundreds, mostly fighters, since the end of November.
Russia, along with Iran, is a key backer of Assad and entered the Syrian civil war nearly a decade ago in support of his regime. Meanwhile, HTS, a former al-Qaida affiliate, is fighting alongside rebel groups backed by Turkey.
The Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who is a main backer of groups opposed to Assad, said on Tuesday that the advance by militants showed that the Syrian president needed to hold talks with the opposition.
Related: Who controls what territory in Syria?
The rout of Syrian army forces from Aleppo and reports that their defensive lines have crumbled has undermined Assad’s already fractured control of the country. While his forces still control Hama, the city has a long history of dissent against dynastic, authoritarian rule. Assad’s late father, Hafez, repressed an anti-government uprising there in 1982.
On Tuesday, an AFP journalist in the northern Hama countryside saw dozens of Syrian army tanks and military vehicles abandoned by the side of the road leading to Hama.
Assad has remained a pariah figure in the west although there have been recent attempts to reopen diplomatic channels. The US state department spokesperson Matthew Miller said in a briefing on Monday that Assad was “a brutal dictator with blood on his hands, the blood of innocent civilians”, and that Washington’s stance on his rule had not changed.
Reuters, the Associated Press and Agence France-Presse contributed to this report
