Insurgents widen attacks and could cut off critical route for Assad's forces

Syrian insurgents fighting forces loyal to the 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.

- Oliver Holmes Patrick Wintour

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 six miles from Hama city, the country's fourth largest, and that their forces had captured Maardis and Soran, towns to its north.

Separately, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a longtime independent war monitor, said yesterday 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 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.