Syrian rebels surrounded the key city of Hama "on three sides" on Wednesday, a war monitor reported, despite a counteroffensive by government forces seeking to retain control of the city, the Guardian reports.
Hama, strategically located in central Syria, is crucial to Bashar al-Assad's army as it protects the capital Damascus, the seat of his government. The fighting around Hama followed a lightning offensive by Islamist-led rebels, who seized large swathes of territory within days, including Aleppo, Syria's second-largest city.
"Rebels have surrounded the city of Hama on three sides and are now three to four kilometers away from it," the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
The UK-based Observatory, which relies on a network of sources in Syria, said "government forces are left with one exit towards Homs in the south".
Key to the rebels' success since the start of the offensive last week has been the capture of Aleppo, which has never fully fallen out of government hands during more than a decade of war.
The leader of the Islamist rebel group Hayat Tahrir Al Sham (HTS), Abu Mohammed Al Jolani, visited the famous Aleppo fortress on Wednesday. In pictures posted on the rebels' Telegram channel, Jolani waves to supporters from an open car as he tours the historic fortress.
In Hama, Wasim, a 36-year-old delivery boy, said the sounds were "really terrifying" and that the continuous bombardment could be clearly heard. "I will stay at home because I have nowhere else to run," he said.
While the rebels encountered little resistance at the beginning of the offensive, the fighting around Hama was particularly fierce.
Assad ordered a 50 percent pay rise for professional soldiers, the state-run Sana news agency reported, as he sought to bolster his forces for a counteroffensive.
A military source cited by Sanaa said "fierce fighting" against rebels in the northern province of Hama since morning, adding that "joint Syrian-Russian warplanes" were part of the effort.
The Observatory reported that government forces had brought "large military convoys into Hama" and its suburbs in the past 24 hours.
"Dozens of trucks" loaded with tanks, weapons, ammunition and soldiers headed towards the city, while "regime forces and pro-government fighters led by Russian and Iranian officers" repelled the attack northwest of Hama, it said.
The fighting took place near an area mostly populated by Alawites, members of the same branch of Shiite Islam as President Assad.
The German news agency DPA reported the death of award-winning Syrian photographer Anas Alkarbutli in an airstrike near Hama.
The rebels launched their offensive on November 27, the same day a truce took effect in the war between Israel and Hezbollah in neighboring Lebanon.
Both Hezbollah and Russia are key allies of the Assad government, but have recently faced conflicts of their own.
Russia, Iran and Turkey were "in close contact" regarding the conflict in Syria, Moscow said on Wednesday. While Russia and Iran support Assad, Turkey supports the opposition.
The UN announced on Wednesday that 115.000 people were "newly displaced in Idlib and northern Aleppo" by the conflict.
The Observatory states that the violence killed 704 people, mostly fighters, but also 110 civilians.
Human Rights Watch warned on Wednesday that the fighting "increases the risk of serious abuses against civilians by opposition armed groups and the Syrian government."
Human rights organizations, including HRW, have documented human rights violations on both sides since the start of the war, including acts that could amount to crimes against humanity by Syrian government forces.
Until last week, the war in Syria had been largely static for several years, but analysts said the violence was imminent because it had never really been resolved.
The leader of the rebel alliance is HTS, which has its roots in the Syrian branch of Al Qaeda.
"They are very well organized, ideologically motivated," said Rim Turkmani, director of the Syrian conflict research program at the London School of Economics.
"However, they are spreading themselves very quickly and very thinly. And I think they will quickly realize that it is beyond their capacity to maintain those territories, and especially to manage them," she concluded.
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