BEIRUT, Lebanon (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 kilometers south of Hama, which the rebels captured on Thursday.
“Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and allied factions have reached five kilometers from the outskirts of Homs city after controlling the towns of Rastan and Talbisseh,” said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), adding that controlling Homs would allow the rebels to “cut off the main road leading to the Syrian coast,” the stronghold of President Bashar al-Assad’s Alawite minority.
Britain-based SOHR, reported “the mass exodus of Alawites from Homs neighborhoods, with tens of thousands heading towards the Syrian coast, fearing the rebel advance.”
Khaled, who lives on the city’s outskirts told Agence France-Presse (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 neighborhood.
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.
“When we talk about objectives, the goal of the revolution remains the overthrow of this regime. It is our right to use all available means to achieve that goal,” al-Jolani told CNN in an interview published Friday.
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 neighborhood, 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 though 13 years of war.