The jihadists are now just 20 kilometers from the capital Damascus after taking control of Dderaa province in southern Syria, a commander and the non-governmental organization Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (OSDH) said.

Rami Abdel Rahman, the director of OSDH, told the French news agency that jihadists control all of Deraa, the cradle of the 2011 uprising against the regime of Bashar al-Assad. One of their commanders, Hassan Abdel Ghani, confirmed that they are “less than 20 kilometers” from the southern entrance to Damascus.

Since the fall of Halepi last week, government forces have been collapsing across the country at breakneck speed as jihadists have taken over one by one many major cities and reappeared in areas where it was thought the insurgency had been suppressed years ago. In addition to Aleppo in the north, Hama in central Syria and Deir Ezzor in the east, rebels are said to have also seized Kuneytra, Deraa and Suaydah in the south and are advancing towards the capital Damascus.

Government forces have focused on Homs. State television and army sources said they have launched air strikes against rebel positions while reinforcements are arriving to defend the city.

Meanwhile, jihadists are extending their control over almost all of southwestern Syria and say they have captured Sanamaine, on the main road leading from Damascus to Jordan. The Syrian army says it is redeploying, without admitting it has lost territory.

The speed with which events are unfolding has stunned most Arab countries and is causing a new wave of concern for the stability of the region. Qatar said today that Syria’s territorial integrity is threatened.

Syria’s civil war, which erupted in 2011 as an uprising against the Assad regime, created space for jihadists to seize large swathes of land and launch terrorist attacks around the world, while seven million refugees fled to neighboring countries and major foreign powers established bases in the country.

Western officials say the Syrian army is in a difficult position, unable to stop the jihadists and are forced to retreat.

Assad has for years relied on his allies to suppress the jihadists: Russian fighters bombed from the air while Iran sent its own allies, Hezbollah fighters and Iraqi militias, to reinforce ground forces. But since 2022, Russia has focused on the war in Ukraine and Hezbollah has suffered heavy losses in its own war with Israel, severely limiting its capabilities.

On Friday, Russia urged its citizens to flee Syria. Iran removed the families of its diplomats, according to one official.

Hezbollah sent some “surveillance forces” to Homs, but a larger force would be exposed to Israeli strikes. Israel bombed two border crossings on the Lebanese-Syrian border on Friday.

Iranian-backed Iraqi militias have been put on alert and thousands of them are ready to deploy to Syria and have massed near the border. But they have not yet received orders to cross them, two of their commanders said. Iraq is not seeking a military intervention in Syria, a government spokesman said.

In Doha, Qatar, the foreign ministers of Iran, Russia and Turkey have begun talks to discuss the situation in Syria. Iranian Minister Abbas Araghsi told Iranian television that “no concrete decisions have been taken” on the future of Syria and that the Doha meeting is aimed at ensuring the country’s territorial integrity.