{"id":679,"date":"2024-12-05T16:00:58","date_gmt":"2024-12-05T16:00:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/2024\/12\/05\/syrian-rebels-capture-second-major-city-as-army-withdraws-from-hama\/"},"modified":"2024-12-05T16:00:58","modified_gmt":"2024-12-05T16:00:58","slug":"syrian-rebels-capture-second-major-city-as-army-withdraws-from-hama","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/2024\/12\/05\/syrian-rebels-capture-second-major-city-as-army-withdraws-from-hama\/","title":{"rendered":"Syrian rebels capture second major city as army withdraws from Hama"},"content":{"rendered":"

Syria\u2019s army said it is withdrawing from Hama, a symbolic and strategically important central city, marking a second major gain for a newly formed rebel coalition that also captured Aleppo last week. <\/p>\n

\u201cOver the past few hours, with the intensification of confrontations between our soldiers and terrorist groups and the rise of a number of martyrs in our ranks, these groups were able to penetrate several parts of the city and entered it,\u201d the Syrian military said in a statement carried by state news outlet SANA. <\/p>\n

Rebels said they freed hundreds of those \u201cwrongfully detained\u201d from the central prison. <\/p>\n

Aleppo, Syria\u2019s second-largest city, was recaptured last week by rebel groups after a surprise offensive overran President Bashar al-Assad\u2019s forces and allied militias. <\/p>\n

The offensive was a major setback for Assad and his backers in Iran and Russia, and has reignited a civil war that had been largely dormant for years. <\/p>\n

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Hama is strategically located at a key crossroads in western-central Syria, providing direct supply lines between the capital Damascus and Aleppo. Rebels had been unable to capture the city since the Syrian civil war began in 2011. <\/p>\n

Abu Mohammad Al Jolani, the leader of Hayat Tahrir Al Sham (HTS) \u2013 the main rebel group leading the offensive \u2013 said his forces entered Hama to \u201ccleanse a 40-year-old wound.\u201d <\/p>\n

The city holds symbolic significance as it was the site of one of the country\u2019s largest and most brutal massacres in 1982, when President Hafez al-Assad \u2013 the current ruler\u2019s father \u2013 ordered his military to quash a revolt. A 1983 Amnesty International report put the death toll on both sides as between 10,000 and 25,000. <\/p>\n

HTS was formed by Jolani after he dismantled Al-Qaeda\u2019s Syrian affiliate al-Nusra Front in 2016 over ideological differences. Jolani then formed HTS in early 2017 and has attempted to rebrand it into a moderate Islamist group. <\/p>\n

Despite Jolani\u2019s effort to distance his new group from al Qaeda and ISIS, the United States designated the HTS a Foreign Terrorist Organization in 2018 and placed a $10 million bounty on him. <\/p>\n

The rebels vowed to advance further south, to the city of Homs, another major city about 165 kilometers (100 miles) from the capital Damascus. <\/p>\n

\u201cOur heroic people in Homs, your time has come. Declare it a revolution against oppression and tyranny,\u201d said Hassan Abdulghani, the spokesperson for the rebels. <\/p>\n

Syria\u2019s civil war began during the 2011 Arab Spring as the government suppressed an uprising against Assad, who has been president since 2000. The country plunged into a full-scale civil war as the protests turned into an armed rebellion. <\/p>\n

Hama was the site of some of the first protests against the Syrian regime during the Arab Spring. <\/p>\n

This is a developing story and will be updated.<\/i> <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

This post appeared first on cnn.com<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Syria\u2019s army said it is withdrawing from Hama, a symbolic and strategically important central city, marking a second major gain for a newly formed rebel coalition that also captured Aleppo last week. \u201cOver the past few hours, with the intensification of confrontations between our soldiers and terrorist groups and the rise of a number of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":680,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-679","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/679","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=679"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/679\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/680"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=679"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=679"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=679"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}