Syrian Opposition Forces Advance Close to Hama City, Piling Pressure on Assad and His Allies

Opposition fighters talk together as one of them stands on a military vehicle holding a weapon in the town of Tel Rifaat, Syria December 2, 2024. (Reuters)
Opposition fighters talk together as one of them stands on a military vehicle holding a weapon in the town of Tel Rifaat, Syria December 2, 2024. (Reuters)
TT

Syrian Opposition Forces Advance Close to Hama City, Piling Pressure on Assad and His Allies

Opposition fighters talk together as one of them stands on a military vehicle holding a weapon in the town of Tel Rifaat, Syria December 2, 2024. (Reuters)
Opposition fighters talk together as one of them stands on a military vehicle holding a weapon in the town of Tel Rifaat, Syria December 2, 2024. (Reuters)

Syrian opposition factions advancing against government forces pushed close on Tuesday to the major city of Hama, fighters and a war monitor said, after their sudden capture of Aleppo last week rocked President Bashar al-Assad.

Fighters and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor said factins had captured villages including Maar Shahur a few miles north of the city. Syrian state media said reinforcements were arriving in the area.

An attack on Hama would ramp up pressure on Assad, whose Russian and Iranian allies have scrambled to support him against a reviving uprising. The city has remained in government hands since civil war erupted in 2011.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said in an Arabic-language interview that Tehran would consider sending troops to Syria if Damascus asked, and Russian President Vladimir Putin urged an end to "terrorist aggression" in Syria, RIA reported.

Iraq Prime Minister Shia al-Sudani said Baghdad would not be "a mere spectator" in Syria and blamed Israeli military strikes on the Syrian government for the opposition advance, his office said.

Compounding Assad's problems, fighters from a US-backed, Kurdish-led coalition battled government forces in the northeast, both sides said, opening a new front along a vital supply route.

Last week's opposition seizure of Aleppo - Syria's largest city before the war - marked the biggest offensive for years.

The front lines of the conflict have been frozen since 2020 after Assad clawed back most of the country from opposition factions, thanks to help from Russian air power and military help from Iran and its network of regional Shiite militia groups.

Now, however, Russia has been concentrating on the war in Ukraine, while Israeli strikes over the past three months have decimated the leadership of Hezbollah, the strongest Iran-backed force fighting in Syria.

On Monday, hundreds of Iran-backed Iraqi militia fighters entered Syria to back up Syrian government forces, Iraqi and Syrian sources said, but Hezbollah does not plan to send forces now.

An opposition source said Iran-backed militia fighters were among the forces they were battling outside Hama.

In recent days, Russian and Syrian government warplanes have intensified airstrikes against opposition fighters, both sides have said. Rescue workers have reported deadly strikes on hospitals in Aleppo and Idlib.

JOCKEYING FOR TERRITORY

Any sustained escalation in Syria risks further destabilizing a region already alight from wars in Gaza and Lebanon, where a truce between Israel and the Hezbollah group took effect last week.

The retreat by Assad's forces over the past several days has led to jockeying for control among other groups that control pockets in the northwest, north and east.

The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), an umbrella group which controls territory in Syria's east with US support, said early on Tuesday that its Deir Ezzor Military Council had "become responsible for protecting" seven villages previously held by the Syrian army.

The Deir Ezzor Military Council comprises local Arab fighters under the SDF, an alliance mainly led by a Kurdish faction, the People’s Protection Units (YPG).

Syrian state media reported that the army and allied forces were repelling an SDF assault on the villages, the only Syrian government presence along the east bank of the Euphrates river, an area otherwise mostly held by the SDF.

A Syrian military officer said the SDF push was aimed at exploiting government forces' weakness after the opposition advance, and said the army and allied Iran-backed militia groups were sending reinforcements.

Airstrikes also targeted Iran-backed militia groups supporting Syrian government forces in the strategically vital region, a security source in eastern Syria and a Syrian army source said.

The US military, which has a small number of troops based at a gas field in the area, carried out at least one strike in self defense overnight, a US official said, adding it was not related to the ongoing opposition advances.

CROWDED BATTLEFIELD

The battlefield is crowded in northern Syria, with the US, Russia, Iran and Türkiye all involved in the renewed fighting, underscoring the messy global politics at play.

On Monday, Iran said there would be a foreign ministers meeting with Türkiye and Russia in Doha next weekend as part of a diplomatic process that had earlier been used to stabilize borders.

The SDF was the main Western-backed ground force in eastern Syria fighting ISIS, which ran an extremist mini-state there from 2014-17. Türkiye says the SDF's main fighting force, the YPG, are Kurdish separatists it regards as terrorists, and sent troops across the frontier in 2017 to push them back.

Opposition advances in recent days have dislodged the YPG from areas in and near Aleppo, including Aleppo's Sheikh Maqsoud district and a corridor around Tel Refaat to the north.

The SDF presence in northeast Syria along much of the border with Iraq also complicates supply lines for Iran-backed regional militia groups supporting Assad. On Monday Reuters reported that hundreds of Iran-backed Iraqi fighters had crossed the border into Syria to help government forces.

Israel has regularly struck Iran-backed forces in Syria. Hezbollah said an Israeli strike near Damascus on Tuesday killed one of its senior officers liaising with the Syrian military. Israel's military said it does not comment on reports in foreign media. 



Israeli Soldier Sentenced to 7 Months in Jail for Abusing Palestinian Detainees

An Israeli soldier walks across an agricultural field at the entrance of the Tulkarem refugee camp in Tulkarem on February 5, 2025, as the army conducts a raid in the occupied West Bank city. (Photo by Zain JAAFAR / AFP)
An Israeli soldier walks across an agricultural field at the entrance of the Tulkarem refugee camp in Tulkarem on February 5, 2025, as the army conducts a raid in the occupied West Bank city. (Photo by Zain JAAFAR / AFP)
TT

Israeli Soldier Sentenced to 7 Months in Jail for Abusing Palestinian Detainees

An Israeli soldier walks across an agricultural field at the entrance of the Tulkarem refugee camp in Tulkarem on February 5, 2025, as the army conducts a raid in the occupied West Bank city. (Photo by Zain JAAFAR / AFP)
An Israeli soldier walks across an agricultural field at the entrance of the Tulkarem refugee camp in Tulkarem on February 5, 2025, as the army conducts a raid in the occupied West Bank city. (Photo by Zain JAAFAR / AFP)

An Israeli soldier who was found to have struck Palestinian detainees while they were restrained and blindfolded has been sentenced to seven months in jail by an Israeli military court.
The Israeli military on Thursday announced the court had accepted a plea agreement with the soldier, a reservist who it said admitted to having "severely abused" Palestinian detainees at the Sde Teiman military detention centre near the border with the Gaza Strip.
"The defendant was convicted of several incidents in which he struck detainees with his fists and his weapon while they were bound and blindfolded," the military said. It did not name the soldier or detail the charges he was convicted of, Reuters reported.
The military statement did not identify where the Palestinian detainees were from, why they had been detained or whether they had since been charged or convicted of crimes or released from detention.
In addition to seven months imprisonment, the court handed the soldier a suspended sentence and demoted him to the rank of private. The military said the soldier had served as a security guard at the detention center but did not say what rank he had held. Israeli media reported the soldier's jail sentence included time that he had already spent in detention.
The military court found that other masked soldiers had participated in the abuse but that their identities had not been determined, the military said, without saying how many.
The convicted soldier had beaten the detainees in front of other soldiers, some of whom had told him to stop, the military said, adding that a recording of the abuse had been found on the mobile phone of the convicted soldier.
The military has been investigating allegations that soldiers had abused Palestinians from Gaza held in military detention since the start of the war in October 2023. The military on Thursday did not say whether investigations were still ongoing or if any other soldiers had been charged.
In July last year, right-wing Israeli protesters broke into Sde Teiman detention facility and another Israeli military compound after investigators arrived to question soldiers about suspected abuse.