SYRIA’S government said today its counteroffensive had pushed back insurgents attempting to advance to the strategic central city of Hama.

Meanwhile, the insurgents, led by the Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham jihadist group, claimed to have captured more Syrian troops and allied fighters in fierce battles.

The latest flare-up in Syria’s long civil war comes after forces opposed to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad captured large parts of the northern city of Aleppo, the country’s largest, as well as towns and villages in the south of the north-western province of Idlib.

The war pitting Mr Assad’s government against an array of armed opposition forces seeking his overthrow has killed an estimated half-million people over the past 13 years, with foreign powers intervening on both sides.

According to the  official Syrian Arab News Agency, insurgents have retreated some 12 miles from government-held Hama, Syria’s fourth-largest city, as government troops backed by Russian air strikes entrenched themselves on the outskirts. 

The insurgents, through their Military Operations Department channel on the Telegram app claimed, without evidence, to have captured five enemy fighters, of whom two were from Afghanistan, as well as three Syrian soldiers from the army’s 25th Special Mission Forces Division in eastern Hama. 

If the insurgents seize Hama city and control the province, that could leave the coastal cities of Tartous and Lattakia isolated from the rest of the country. Lattakia is a key political stronghold for Mr Assad and Syria’s Alawite community and also a strategic Russian naval base.

Tens of thousands of civilians have been displaced by the fighting, which started last week, United Nations special envoy for Syria Geir Pedersen said on Tuesday.

In an address to the UN security council, he said: “If we do not see de-escalation and a rapid move to a serious political process, involving the Syrian parties and the key international players, then I fear we will see a deepening of the crisis.

“Syria will be in grave danger of further division, deterioration and destruction.”