March 24, 2017•Update: March 25, 2017
By Levent Tok and Adham Kako
HAMA, Syria
The Free Syrian Army (FSA) and other armed opposition groups have recently advanced on the city of Hama and now stand only 3 kilometers from the city center, sources in the field told Anadolu Agency.

The latest advances come within the context of an opposition campaign launched earlier this week from the Al-Qaboun and Jobar districts of Damascus with the aim of preventing regime forces from pushing into Eastern Ghouta, a suburb of the capital.
Recent days have seen the FSA and other opposition factions recapture several key positions in Hama.
Mohamed Rashid, a spokesman for the FSA-affiliated al-Nasr (“Army of Victory”), told Anadolu Agency Thursday night that opposition forces had captured a number of regime troops -- he did not say how many -- and Iranian-backed foreign fighters.
Opposition forces, he said, had also destroyed two regime tanks on the Hama- highway and another four in the area, while also capturing arms and ammunition stores.
Rashid went on to assert that opposition forces -- led by the Jaysh al-Nasr -- had also managed to establish control over much of Hama’s northern countryside, including the towns of , and .
This means that opposition forces currently stand roughly 3 kilometers from Hama’s city center and 4 kilometers from Hama’s military airport.
Earlier Thursday, opposition fighters claimed to have struck the military airport with rockets, destroying two Syrian warplanes.
Syria has been locked in a vicious civil war since early when the Bashar al-Assad regime cracked down on pro-democracy protests -- which erupted as part of the "Arab Spring" uprisings -- with unexpected ferocity.
Since then, more than a quarter of a million Syrians have been killed and more than 10 million displaced, according to UN estimates.