Syrian forces launch counterattack against rebels

Syrian government forces initiated a counteroffensive against rebels near the key city of Hama on Wednesday, following significant territorial losses, according to a war monitor.

Hama is strategically located in central Syria and for the army, it is key to safeguarding the capital and seat of power Damascus, News.Az reports, citing foreign media.

The fighting around Hama follows a lightning offensive by the rebels who in a matter of days seized swathes of territory from President Bashar al-Assad's control.

Key in the rebels' successes since the start of the offensive last week has been the takeover of Aleppo, Syria's second city, which in more than a decade of war had never fallen from government hands.

In Aleppo, a medical student told AFP that staff at the hospital where he worked were "largely absent, with departments working at 50 percent capacity".

"We try to tend to emergency cases that come to the hospital, using medical supplies sparingly," he said on condition of anonymity.

While the advancing rebels found little resistance earlier in their offensive, the fighting around Hama has been especially fierce.

The city was the scene of a massacre by the army under Assad's father in the 1980s targeting people accused of loyalty to the banned Muslim Brotherhood.

Decades on, the scars of the massacre that sent thousands of Syrians into exile have yet to heal, and Hama was the site of some of the biggest protests early on in the pro-democracy revolt that erupted in 2011 and sparked the civil war.

By Tuesday, rebel forces had reached the gates of Hama city, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor, as the fighting sparked a wave of displacement.

According to the Britain-based Observatory, "regime forces launched a counterattack" in Hama province on Wednesday with air support on the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) rebels and allied factions.

Government forces pushed HTS away from the provincial capital by about 10 kilometres (six miles), the Observatory said, reporting fierce battles as rebels failed in their bid to capture an area near the city.

News.Az