Syrian rebel forces were approaching the country’s third largest city of Homs on Friday, a human rights group that monitors the war reported, raising the prospect of the country’s capital city Damascus being cut off from coastal areas that are a stronghold of President Bashar al-Assad.
The U.K.-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which has relied on a network of sources on the ground to closely monitor the war since it started in 2011, said rebel forces had advanced to only about three miles from the city, and that regime soldiers had withdrawn from a number of nearby towns and villages in response to their advance.
SOHR said Assad’s forces had carried out airstrikes on water infrastructure in a nearby city and on a highway, but no casualties were reported.
What is happening with the war in Syria?
Thousands of people were fleeing from the area amid the dramatic escalation in the civil war, which had simmered without …