Syrian President Bashar al-Assad yesterday delivered prayers for Islam’s Eid al-Fitr holiday in Hama, the farthest he has traveled inside Syria in years, showing his growing confidence.
Assad joined worshippers at the Nouri Mosque for prayers on the first day of the three-day holiday.
State television broadcast footage of al-Assad standing to pray in a large mosque in Hama behind its imam, with other clerics standing alongside and a large crowd of worshipers.
Photo: Reuters / Syrian Arab News Agency
The state-run Syrian Arab News Agency quoted the preacher as saying that al-Assad’s presence in the city for Eid showed that victory and the return of security were only “a few steps” away.
Since the war began in 2011, it has killed hundreds of thousands, driven millions more from their homes, sparked a global refugee crisis and drawn in regional and world powers.
The conflict is far from over. Rebels hold swathes of the country, including around Idlib Province near Hama, and launched a new attack in Quneitra in the southwest on Saturday.
Rebels also hold the Eastern Ghouta area near Damascus, parts of the desert in the southeast and a large pocket south of Hama around the city of Rastan.
As recently as March, rebels advanced from Idlib Province to within a few kilometers of Hama, before the army and its allies pushed them back in weeks of fierce fighting.
However, the army drove insurgents from their biggest urban stronghold in Aleppo in December last year and have also forced several important rebel enclaves to surrender over the past year.
Al-Assad has not made a declared visit to Hama, which is about 185km from Damascus, since the war began.
Last year he delivered Eid prayers in Homs, about 40km closer to Damascus.
In other developments, a car bomb killed 10 people in Idlib Province on Saturday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitoring group, reported yesterday. The attack occurred in a market in the town of al-Dana, near the border with Turkey, it said.
Three people under 18 were among the dead and the blast also injured at least 30 other people, the observatory said.
The UN and aid agencies have voiced concern about the humanitarian situation in Idlib, where large numbers of people live in poor conditions and face aerial bombardment.
Additional reporting by AP
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