Syrian forces battling insurgents north of strategic city of Hama

BEIRUT (AP) — Syria said Wednesday its counteroffensive has pushed back insurgents attempting to advance to the strategic central city of Hama, while the insurgency says it captured more Syrian troops and Iran-backed militants in fierce battles.

The latest flareup in Syria’s long civil war comes after forces opposed to Syrian President Bashar Assad over the past days captured large parts of the northern city of Aleppo, the country’s largest, as well as towns and villages in southern parts of the northwestern Idlib province.

The war between Assad and his foreign backers and the array of armed opposition forces seeking his overthrow has killed an estimated half-million people over the past 13 years.

Syrian state media SANA said insurgents retreated some 20 kilometers (12 miles) from government-held Hama, Syria’s fourth largest city, as government troops backed by Russian airpower entrenched themselves in the outskirts. Fierce fighting has raged for days as Damascus fears that the insurgents will make their way into the city like they did over the weekend into Aleppo.

The insurgency through its Military Operations Department channel on the Telegram app said they captured five Iran-backed militants, of whom two were from Afghanistan, as well as three Syrian troops from its 25th Special Mission Forces Division in eastern Hama. The claims could not be independently confirmed.

If the insurgents seize Hama city and control the province, it could leave the coastal cities of Tartous and Lattakia isolated from the rest of the country. Lattakia is a key political stronghold for Assad and Syria’s Alawite community and a strategic Russian naval base.

Tens of thousands have been displaced by the fighting, which started last week, Geir Pedersen, the U.N. special envoy for Syria, said Tuesday.

“If we do not see deescalation and a rapid move to a serious political process, involving the Syrian parties and the key international players, then I fear we will see a deepening of the crisis,” Pedersen said in an address the U.N. Security Council. “Syria will be in grave danger of further division, deterioration, and destruction.”

The insurgency is led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, a jihadi group, as well as an umbrella group of Turkish-backed Syrian militias called the Syrian National Army. For years, both have entrenched themselves in northwest Idlib province and parts of northern Aleppo, as the battered country reeled from years of political and military stalemates.

The groups, alongside Turkey, believe that the insurgency shows that Assad must reconcile with opposition forces and include them in any political solution to end the conflict.

Ankara has been seeking to normalize ties with Syria to address security threats from groups affiliated with Kurdish militants along its southern border and to help ensure the safe return of more than 3 million Syrian refugees. Assad has insisted that Turkey’s withdrawal of its military forces from northern Syria be a condition for any normalization between the two countries.

Damascus views the insurgents as terrorists, and Assad has vowed to respond to the insurgency with an iron fist.

Turkish and Iranian officials have met earlier this week, in a bid to reach a solution to deescalate the flareup. Arab countries bordering Syria and once backed groups that tried to overthrow Assad, have expressed their concern of the conflict’s regional impacts, and have backed the president.

Kareem Chehayeb, The Associated Press