Tens of thousands flee Homs as Islamist rebels advance, Syrian war monitor says

This picture shows a bullet-riddled portrait of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad at the Kweyris military airfield in the eastern part of Aleppo province on December 3, 2024. Photo / AFP

Tens of thousands of members of President Bashar al-Assad’s Alawite minority community were fleeing Syria’s third city Homs Thursday, for fear that Islamist-led rebels would keep up their advance, a war monitor said.

Homs lies just 40 kilometres (25 miles) south of Hama, which the rebels captured on Thursday.

Analysts said they expected the fighters led by Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) to push on towards the city, a key link between Damascus and the Alawite heartland on the Mediterranean coast.

Britain-based war monitor, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, reported “the mass exodus of Alawites from Homs neighbourhoods, with tens of thousands heading towards the Syrian coast, fearing the rebel advance”.

Khaled, who lives on the city’s outskirts told AFP that “the road leading to (coastal) Tartus province was glowing... due to the lights of hundreds of cars on their way out”.

In April 2014, at least 100 people, mostly civilians, were killed in twin attacks in Homs that targeted a majority Alawite neighbourhood.

The attacks were claimed by the Al-Nusra Front, the Syrian branch of Al-Qaeda which now HTS leader Abu Mohammed al-Jolani previously led.

Jolani announced his group had cut ties with the jihadists in 2016, and Al-Nusra was dissolved the following year, to be replaced by the key component of HTS.

Haidar, 37, who lives in an Alawite-majority neighbourhood, told AFP by telephone that “fear is the umbrella that covers Homs now”.

“I’ve never seen this scene in my life. We are extremely afraid, we don’t know what is happening from one hour to the next,” he said.

He has managed to send his parents to Tartus, but has not found a car to take him and his wife “due to the high demand”.

“When we find a car, we’ll leave as fast as possible for Tartus.”

The province, which hosts a naval base operated by Assad ally Russia, has remained safe through 13 years of war.

-Agence France-Presse