BEIRUT (AFP) – Syrian government forces launched a counterattack against rebels around the key city of Hama yesterday after suffering a string of staggering losses, a war monitor said.
Hama is strategically located in central Syria and for the army, it is key to safeguarding the capital and seat of power Damascus.
The fighting around Hama follows a lightning offensive by the rebels who in a matter of days seized swathes of territory from President Bashar al-Assad’s control.
Key in the rebels’ successes since the start of the offensive last week has been the takeover of Aleppo, Syria’s second city, which in more than a decade of war had never fallen from government hands.
In Aleppo, a medical student told AFP that staff at the hospital where he worked were “largely absent, with departments working at 50 per cent capacity”.
“We try to tend to emergency cases that come to the hospital, using medical supplies sparingly,” he said on condition of anonymity.
While the advancing rebels found little resistance earlier in their offensive, the fighting around Hama has been especially fierce.
By Tuesday, rebel forces had reached the gates of Hama city, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor, as the fighting sparked a wave of displacement.
AFP images showed people fleeing the town of Suran, between Aleppo and Hama, many of them carrying whatever they could take aboard their vehicles.
