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There were scenes of jubilation in Hama on Wednesday evening after rebels took control of Syria's fourth-largest city and advanced south toward neighbouring Homs, while armed opposition fighters seized regime positions in Daraa province in Syria's south as well as the main border crossing with Jordan.

A , the father of current President Bashar, was toppled as crowds cheered loudly and fired celebratory gunfire into the air.

However, on Thursday, Syrian opposition fighters accused the Russian air force of committing a "massacre" in the city, according to Al-Araby TV, which did not provide further details.

Russia has been a key ally of the Assad regime but on Thursday told all its citizens to leave Syria.

The city has a long history of opposition to Assad's rule and was the scene of a brutal massacre by regime forces in 1982, which killed up to 35,000 people. While it saw large-scale peaceful protests against the Assad regime in 2011, it largely stayed out of subsequent armed fighting.

Syrian opposition fighters also freed hundreds of prisoners after capturing the city’s central prison, according to Hassan Abdel Ghani, the leader of the Syrian armed opposition’s Military Operations Administration.

Rebels advance on Homs; attacks in Daraa

The capture of the city brought the rebels within striking distance of Homs, Syria’s third-largest city and one of the main centres of anti-regime protest during the 2011 uprising against Bashar al-Assad’s rule.

Rami Abdul Rahman, the head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) war monitor told the AFP news agency: "Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and allied factions have reached five kilometres from the outskirts of Homs city", referring to the hardline Islamist group which has led the rebel offensive.

There were initial reports that regime forces had withdrawn from Homs but this was quickly denied by the regime's news agency SANA.

In southern Syria's Daraa province, also a former opposition stronghold, anti-Assad fighters seized the key Nassib border crossing which Jordan, as well as the Jumruk crossing,  according to ������’s sister site Al-Araby Al-Jadeed.

Al-Araby Al-Jadeed also reported that rebels in Daraa had carried out attacks on regime checkpoints, police stations and security headquarters.

Opposition fighters captured the two towns of Rastan and Talbiseh, both of which had been rebel strongholds from 2011 onwards before reverting to Assad regime control in 2018 under a "reconciliation" deal.

Abdel Ghani said in a statement on Telegram on Friday that "our forces continue to march steadily towards the city of Homs".

He said "hundreds" of fighters who had been forced to leave Homs years ago after the government retook it had returned "to deter Assad's aggression against their city".

While Homs was once dubbed the “capital of the revolution” due to the large-scale protests it saw against Assad rule in 2011 and 2012, it also has a significant population of regime loyalists, many of them from the Alawite religious sect that Syria's ruling family belongs to.

Videos were uploaded to social media channels on Wednesday night showing hundreds of people fleeing the city in cars to the coastal regime stronghold of Tartous, amid reports that some regime forces had also withdrawn from the city.

However, Reuters reported that the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah, which has long provided support to the Assad regime, had sent a small group of what it called “supervising forces” to prevent the rebels from seizing the city.

The surprise rebel assault began on 27 November, when HTS led force seized towns in Idlib and Aleppo provinces before capturing Aleppo, the second-largest city in Syria.

Since then, the rebel force has swept south, seizing town after town with the apparent aim of capturing the capital Damascus and ending regime rule.

Erdogan hopes rebels will reach Damascus

In Turkey, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said he hoped Syrian rebels will continue their advance against rebel forces in Syria, but voiced concern about what he called "terrorist organisations" in their midst, in an apparent reference to HTS, which used to be affiliated to Al-Qaeda.

"The target is Damascus," he said. "I would say we hope for this advance to continue without any issues.

"However, while this resistance there with terrorist organisations is continuing, we had made a call to Assad," he added, referring to his approaches to Assad earlier this year to meet and normalise ties after more than a decade of animosity.

"These problematic advances continuing as a whole in the region are not in a manner we desire, our heart does not want these. Unfortunately, the region is in a bind," he said, without elaborating.

The Israeli military meanwhile said that it would "not tolerate" any threat from Syria and was reinforcing positions near the occupied Golan Heights. Israel made several incursions there and carried out deadly strikes in Syria during its recent war on Lebanon and the Hezbollah group.

Agencies contributed to this report.