The armed group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which opposes the Bashar al-Assad government in Syria, announced that they reached the center of the northern city of Hama hours after taking control of Aleppo and Idlib yesterday.
The Syrian government denied allegations that its army had withdrawn from Hama. According to a report by the state-run SANA News Agency, citing a military source, the soldiers were deployed in the northern and eastern countryside.