On December 7, Hayat Tahrir-al-Sham (HTS) jihadist groups in Syria entered the suburbs of Damascus after flooding into some of Syria's largest cities.
Reuters quoted rebel commander Hassan Abdul-Ghani as saying early on December 8 that rebels had completely captured the city of Homs in central Syria. Homs is a city of great strategic and symbolic importance to the fighters and to the entire opposition.
As HTS jihadists and other anti-government forces moved south from Aleppo and Idlib provinces over the past week, the Syrian army was forced to repeatedly withdraw from key strongholds – including Aleppo, Hama and several towns north of Homs – in order to reestablish defense lines and stop the advancing terrorists.
Terrorists appeared to have breached these defense lines and entered the suburbs of Damascus on December 7, marking the first time since 2015 that jihadists have breached the capital, reaching the doorstep of President Bashar al-Assad.
The Syrian presidential office announced on December 7 that "some foreign media outlets are spreading rumors and false news about President Bashar al-Assad leaving Damascus or making a brief visit to a certain country."
"The Office of the President of the Syrian Arab Republic denies all these rumors and points out their blatant goals, affirming that they are not new, but rather that these agencies have previously followed this pattern of trying to deceive and influence the Syrian state and society throughout the years of the war," the statement read.
President Assad is still carrying out his "national and constitutional duties from the capital Damascus," the statement concluded.
In an anonymously sourced article published on December 6, the British newspaper The Telegraph claimed that Mr. Assad’s family had fled to Russia and that it was “unclear” whether the President himself would remain in Syria. Several Western media outlets reported that Egypt and Jordan were urging President Assad to leave the country and form a government in exile.
Led by a former Al-Qaeda commander and formerly known as Jabhat al-Nusra, HTS is one of several jihadist factions opposing the Assad government in the Syrian civil war.
Russia intervened in the conflict in 2015, helping President Assad retake much of the country from Jabhat al-Nusra and dozens of US-backed armed jihadist groups that Washington calls "moderate rebels".
The US directly intervened against IS, but has armed and funded other anti-Assad forces throughout the decades-long conflict.
President Assad has pledged to "destroy" jihadists rampaging in central Syria and punish their "financiers and supporters".
According to the Syrian News Agency, Russian and Syrian warplanes have carried out near-constant airstrikes on HTS positions since the terrorist offensive began last week, reportedly killing dozens of militants in northern Homs on December 7. The agency claims that 2,500 jihadists have been killed since the beginning of December.
