Syrian rebels said on Thursday they had started pushing into Hama, a major city where pro-government forces backed by intense Russian air strikes are trying to stave off a new rebel victory and halt the lightning advance.
Rebel commander Hassan Abdul Ghany posted on social media that they'd begun to penetrate Hama. State media had earlier reported that pro-government forces had repelled an attack.
Rebels have been battling to try to enter Hama since Tuesday and there was heavy fighting overnight with the Syrian army and allied groups supported by a Russian bombardment, both sides said.
The rebels took the main northern city Aleppo last week and have since pushed south from their enclave in northwest Syria, reaching a strategic hill just north of Hama on Tuesday and advancing towards the city's east and west flanks on Wednesday.
Hama has stayed in government hands throughout the civil war, which erupted in 2011 as a rebellion against President Bashar al-Assad. Its fall to a revived insurgency would send shockwaves through Damascus and its Russian and Iranian allies.
The city lies more than a third of the way from Aleppo to Damascus and its capture would open the road to a rebel advance on Homs, the main central city that functions as a crossroads connecting Syria's most populous regions.
Hama is also critical to the control of two major towns with big minority religious communities, Muhrada which is home to many Christians and Salamiya where there are many Ismaili Muslims.
At least one person was killed and 10 injured, including three children, in overnight drone attacks by Russia on Ukraine, officials said on Wednesday. Various attacks also damaged energy facilities in two regions, according to the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Israel announced a major expansion of military operations in Gaza on Wednesday, saying large areas of the enclave would be seized and added to its security zones, accompanied by large-scale evacuation of population.
A fourth US Army soldier, who together with three others went missing in Lithuania last week when their vehicle sank in a peat bog, has been found dead, US and Lithuanian officials said on Tuesday.
The United Nations on Tuesday dismissed as "ridiculous" an assertion by Israel that there was enough food in the Gaza Strip to last for a long period of time, despite the closure of all 25 bakeries supported by the World Food Programme (WFP).
United Nations officials who surveyed earthquake damage in Myanmar urged the global community to ramp up aid before the looming monsoon season worsens already catastrophic conditions, with the death toll at 2,719 and expected to surpass 3,000.