(BBC News) Rebel forces in southern Syria have reportedly captured most of the Deraa region — the birthplace of the 2011 uprising against President Bashar al-Assad.
A UK-based war monitor reports that the “local factions” were able to take control of many military sites there following “violent battles” with government forces.
According to the Reuters news agency, rebel sources said they had reached a deal for the army to withdraw and for military officials to be given safe passage to the capital, Damascus — roughly 100 km away.
The BBC has been unable to independently verify these reports, which come as Islamist-led rebels in northern Syria claimed to have reached the outskirts of the city of Homs.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), a UK-based war monitor, said on Friday that the rebels in the south now control more than 90% of the Deraa region and that only the Sanamayn area is still in government hands.
Deraa city has both strategic and symbolic importance. It is a provincial capital close to the main crossings on the Jordanian border, and is where pro-democracy protests erupted in 2011 — sparking the country’s ongoing civil war, in which more than a half-million people have been killed.
Jordan’s interior minister said the country had closed its side of the border as “a result of the surrounding security conditions in Syria’s south.”
Elsewhere, Kurdish-led forces say they have taken the city of Deir Ezzor, the government’s main foothold in the vast desert in the east of the country.
It has been just over a week since rebels in the north launched their lightning offensive — the biggest against the Syrian government in years, which has exposed the weakness of the country’s military.
At least 370,000 people are thought to have been displaced so far as a result of the rebel offensive, according to the UN, which has said the fighting is “worsening an already horrific situation for civilians in the north of the country.”
Some civilians are trapped in front-line areas unable to reach safer locations.
SOHR says more than 820 people, including 111 civilians, have been killed across the country since the Islamist-led rebels began their offensive last week.
They seized Hama, to the north of Homs, on Thursday — a second major blow to President Assad, who lost control of Aleppo last week.
The leader of the Islamist militant group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), Abu Mohammed al-Jawlani, told residents of Homs “your time has come”.
The rebels have been advancing south, and Homs would be the next stop on the road to Damascus.
