If they are able to seize it, it could be a decisive turning point in the battle against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.

“If Homs were to fall, Damascus would be cut off from the coast, effectively severing what would remain of regime rule into two,” said Charles Lister, a senior fellow and director of the Syria program at the Middle East Institute.

With a population of more than 1.4 million, Homs is Syria’s third-largest city. Positioned on Syria’s M5 highway, it sits at a strategic location just 25 miles south of Hama, which rebels captured on Thursday. It is roughly 90 miles north of Damascus — the ultimate goal of the rebel offensive — which is still held by Assad’s regime.

Homs is also a central junction between the capital and the Syrian coastline. That coastal area is a stronghold of Syria’s Alawite community, a minority offshoot of Shiite Islam that has traditionally been the Assad political dynasty’s base of power. (The Assad family is Alawite.)

The coast is also home to a Russian naval base in Tartus, with a Russian air base in Hmeimim, farther north. Russia and its military have supported Assad’s regime.

Capturing Homs would be a significant success in the lightning offensive led by the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS, helping to further hasten its rapid advance toward Damascus and protect its gains in the north.

Before the renewed offensive by HTS, the battle lines in Syria’s 13-year civil war had stood mostly unchanged for years. That impasse was broken last week when HTS quickly seized the city of Aleppo, then moved to capture Hama.

The rapid advance stems from rural towns near Hama moving to “abandon the regime” without fighting, the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, said in an update Thursday about the war. “This trend may help HTS-aligned forces approach Homs within the next day without being slowed down by fighting through country villages,” it said.

HTS said Friday that it had captured two towns just six miles north of Homs, a signal of the rebels’ ongoing rapid advance toward the city.

The Syrian army denied that units near Homs were withdrawing. “They are fully prepared and ready to carry out their duties and confront any terrorist attack,” the army said in a statement Friday.

Later in the day, HTS said in a statement on social media: “Our forces have liberated the last village on the outskirts of Homs city, and are now at its walls, and from here we direct the last call to the regime forces: This is your chance to defect.”

The Syrian army overnight said its armed forces were carrying out an operation toward Dar al-Kabira, Talbiseh and al-Rastan in the northern countryside of Homs, with cover from the joint Syrian-Russian air force, weapons and armored vehicles. “The operation is eliminating dozens of terrorists amid a state of panic, confusion and mass flight among their ranks,” the army said, according to state news.

Lister said that “in theory,” the Assad regime has a strong military and security presence in Homs. “But the surrounding countryside is far more amenable to the opposition,” particularly the towns along the M5 highway, he said.

“That provides the opposition with a natural advantage, and with the momentum already in place, Homs is almost certain to fall in not too long,” Lister said.

The Washington Post

Mohamad El Chamaa and Laris Karklis contributed to this report.