Russian forces bombed a key bridge and highway to try to slow the rebels' lightning advance on the Syrian city of Homs as thousands of people fled the area.
The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said civilians were fleeing Homs towards the Mediterranean coastal regions of Latakia and Tartus, government strongholds and sites of Russian air and naval bases.
The United Nations said on December 6 that nearly 300.000 people in Syria have already been displaced since late November by the fighting and that up to 1,5 million could be forced to flee as rebels advance and inflict losses on the forces of the country's President Bashar al-Assad, as well as its allies Russia and Iran.
Assad has relied on Iran and Russia to stay in power since the conflict broke out in 2011 until now.
Reuters quoted a Syrian army officer as saying that overnight Russian bombing destroyed the Rastan Bridge along the key M5 highway linking Homs with Hama, another city seized by rebels a day earlier.
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The rebels, led by the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), have made major advances in the past few days, including capturing Aleppo, the country's largest city, as well as 14 central villages and towns, and have come within 35 kilometers of Russian airspace. bases of Hmeimim.
The United States, Great Britain, Canada and the European Union consider HTS a terrorist group.
Hama, Syria's fourth-largest city, is key to the defense of Damascus and the gateway to the coastal cities of Tartus and Latakia, primarily home to a strategic Russian naval base.
In his first media interview in years, Abu Muhammad al-Julani, the group's leader, told CNN that the goal "remains the overthrow of Bashar al-Assad's regime and it is our right to use all available means to achieve that goal."
In addition to HTS, the rebels also include an umbrella group of Turkish-backed Syrian militias called the Syrian National Army.
The foreign ministers of Iraq, Syria and Iran were due to meet on December 6 to discuss the situation, while Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said top diplomats from Moscow, Tehran and Ankara would meet in Qatar on December 7.
The state news agency TASS reported on December 6 that the Russian embassy in Syria had called on Russian citizens to leave the country because of the situation.
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