Syrian
President Bashar al-Assad delivered prayers for Islam's Eid al-Fitr holiday in
Hama on Sunday, the furthest he has traveled inside Syria in years, showing his
growing confidence.
State
television broadcast footage of Assad standing to pray in a large mosque in
Hama behind its imam, with other clerics standing alongside and a large crowd
of worshippers.
State news
agency SANA quoted the preacher as saying that Assad's presence in the city for
Eid showed that victory and the return of security were only "a few
steps" away.
Syria's
civil war has turned to Assad's favor since 2015, when Russia sent its jets to
help his army and allied Shi'ite militias backed by Iran turn back rebels and
win new ground.
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
and have also forced several important rebel enclaves to surrender over the
past year.
FOCUS ON
ISLAMIC STATE
Assad has
not made a declared visit to Hama, which is about 185 km (115 miles) from
Damascus, since the war began. Last year he delivered Eid prayers in Homs,
about 40km (25 miles) closer to Damascus.
Early in the
crisis he visited Raqqa, a city that has since become the Syrian capital of
Islamic State and now faces an assault by a U.S.-backed coalition to drive out
the militants.
The fight
against Islamic State, which has attacked Western cities, has become the focus
of Western leaders, some of whom have softened demands that Assad must quit to
end the crisis.
In March,
U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Assad's fate would be decided by
Syrians, a change in rhetoric after years of insisting he step down to allow a
political solution.
France's new
President Emmanuel Macron said this month he did not see Assad's departure as a
condition to end the fighting and the priority was stopping Syria becoming a
failed state.
The U.S. and
other Western states, along with Turkey and Gulf monarchies, have long
supported some of the rebels, an array of groups that includes Islamist and
nationalist factions. Assad describes them all as terrorists.
His military
has said its focus is on the campaign in the desert, where it is advancing
against Islamic State to relieve a besieged government enclave in the city of
Deir al-Zor.
REUTERS
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