Siege of Homs

The siege of Homs (حمص) was the encirclement and bombardment of rebel-held neighborhoods of Homs, Syria's third-largest city, by Syrian government forces from mid-2011 until the besieged Old City fell on 9 May 2014, during the Syrian civil war.^{1 • 2 • 3} The Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Syria found that government sieges became longer and consequently harsher as the conflict went on, and Homs was the first prolonged encirclement of the war.¹

After the Old City fell, government forces cleared the remaining rebel enclaves in and around the city, capturing the totality of Homs in May 2017 and the last rebel enclave on 15 May 2018.⁴ In December 2024, in the opposition offensive that ended Assad rule, rebel forces took Homs itself.²

Homs before the siege

Capital of the revolution. Homs was the first major Syrian city to see massive anti-regime rallies, starting in April 2011, which earned it the title "capital of the revolution." The protests, held in the city's main plaza, Clock Square, were bloodily suppressed by the Syrian security services. In response, the Homs region became a breeding ground for the militarization of the revolt, and the Baba Amro neighborhood in the old town became a stronghold for Free Syrian Army insurgents.¹⁰ The city also saw an increase in sectarian violence, including kidnappings and bomb attacks.¹⁰

The city's strategic value explains the regime's determination to hold it. Homs sits near the highway linking Damascus to Aleppo and close to the routes connecting Damascus to northern Lebanon, and it was the lynchpin of the regime's logistics system connecting Damascus to Aleppo and to the coast.^{8 • 9} By January 2014 the regime had contracted its military footprint to Damascus and Homs in order to secure its supply lines while rebels contested the city.⁹

The siege, 2011 to 2014

Starting in the middle of 2011, government forces besieged the city of Homs, and the encirclement ended only with the city's capture in May 2014.¹ The regime imposed a harsh siege that lasted three years, from May 2011 to May 2014, before local armed groups were forcibly evacuated.⁸ The Old City, which had been under siege by regime forces since 2011, faced intensified bombardment and air raids in mid-2013.⁹

Conditions for civilians. Reports describe civilians forced to eat grass to survive in Homs.⁶ Besieging forces sought to deprive the overwhelmingly civilian population of the basic necessities of life by cutting water and power supplies, denying access to food, medicine and medical care, and preventing the movement of people into and out of the besieged areas.³ Homs was one of the governorates where the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights documented government-enforced sieges; across Syria, at least 240,000 people were estimated to be trapped in besieged areas as of January 2014, facing life-threatening shortages of food, water, electricity, fuel and medical care and supplies.⁷

The end of the siege. On 9 May 2014, the two-year siege by government forces of the Old City of Homs ended.³ The city's old part suffered the two-year-long siege until it became accessible again in May 2014.⁴ Homs was the first significant stronghold opposed to Assad that loyalist troops retook, in 2014, though this required bombing that wiped out a whole district of the city.¹⁰ Sectarian violence and forced displacement had occurred in the city in 2011, and only a few neighborhoods maintained their mixed sectarian character, such as Al-Waer, Ikrima, and Id-Dikhar.⁴

Retaking the city

The regime army retook Homs after two sieges, supported by Russian aviation and Shia militias close to Iran. The Khalidiya neighborhood, a former rebel district, was retaken by loyalist forces in July 2013.⁵ In May 2017 the Syrian Arab Army captured the totality of Homs city, and hundreds of rebels and their family members were evacuated.⁴ In early 2018 the army launched a military operation in northern rural Homs that forced rebel groups there either to negotiate their exit to northern Syria or to reconcile with the government; government forces seized the last rebel enclave in Homs on 15 May 2018, and buses evacuated rebels and their families to northern Syria.⁴

The al-Waer enclave illustrates how these surrenders worked. A militia, drawn largely from Homs's Shia villages by Iran and Lebanon's Hezbollah, functioned near the encircled al-Waer district, and during late 2013 the Syrians launched a significant mediation effort intended to achieve a peaceful settlement covering the whole governorate.¹¹ When the end of a siege was negotiated under duress elsewhere in Syria, civilian populations faced a choice between transfer to the rebel-held enclave of Idlib, displacement camps, or return under government control.¹²

Sieges as a strategy of the war

Homs was the opening case of a method the Syrian government applied across the country. Heavily enforced sieges were imposed in strategically located and embattled provinces such as Homs, Aleppo, Damascus and rural Damascus, freezing battle lines and preventing the advance of the insurgency.¹² An estimated 2.5 million Syrians lived through sieges over the course of the conflict. While the Islamic State, the US-led coalition, and armed opposition groups were each implicated in at least one siege, the Syrian government, supported by its allies Russia and Iran and their militias, was responsible for the vast majority, and it was the only party to intentionally inflict starvation, deny humanitarian access, and restrict the free movement of civilians in a widespread and systematic manner.¹³

International humanitarian law places limits on siege warfare even against legitimate military targets. When the need arises to shield them from the impact of military operations, or when they do not have the items vital to staying alive, civilians must be permitted to evacuate an area under siege, and this applies in particular to any siege that employs starvation as a way of waging war.¹⁴ The UN Commission of Inquiry concluded that sieges by parties to the conflict were imposed in violation of their obligations under international humanitarian law.⁷

Aftermath and the fall of Assad rule

Homs was heavily damaged, but reconstruction stalled after the fighting.⁵ In the opposition offensive launched on 27 November 2024, anti-Assad forces took Aleppo, Hama and Homs within days, and Damascus fell on 8 December 2024; Islamist-led rebel fighters entered Homs, Syria's third city, overnight in the early hours of 8 December 2024.^{15 • 2}

Displaced residents have since returned in large numbers. According to UNHCR figures for 21 May 2026, some 182,585 people had come back to places in Homs governorate after being displaced within Syria, a movement that began in December 2024, while 206,650 others had come back to the governorate from overseas over that same span.¹⁶ The conflict's many years have devastated housing, schools, medical facilities, water networks, and public infrastructure across much of the region, with Homs City, Al-Qusayr, Ar-Rastan, and Tadmor especially affected.¹⁷

References

1. Report of the independent international commission of inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic, UN Human Rights Council
2. Instability in Syria, Global Conflict Tracker, Council on Foreign Relations
3. Syria: Updated briefing on sieges across Syria, Amnesty International (June 2014)
4. Syria: Security Situation, COI Report, European Union Agency for Asylum (September 2022)
5. Syrie : voyage dans un pays exsangue, Le Monde (15 September 2024)
6. Sieges, the Law and Protecting Civilians, Chatham House (June 2019)
7. Living under Siege, Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (February 2014)
8. Creating an Insurgency, in From Jihad to Politics, Oxford Academic
9. The Campaign for Homs and Aleppo: The Assad Regime's Strategy in 2013, Isabel Nassief, Institute for the Study of War (January 2014)
10. In Homs, which embodies Syria's diversity, the specter of revenge weighs heavy, Le Monde (12 February 2025)
11. How local are local agreements? Shaping local agreements as a new form of third-party intervention in protracted conflicts, Contemporary Security Studies
12. Neither peace nor democracy: the role of siege and population control in the Syrian regime's coercive counterinsurgency campaign, Small Wars & Insurgencies
13. Out of Sight, Out of Mind: The Aftermath of Syria's Sieges, PAX / Siege Watch Final Report
14. IHL on the protection of the civilian population during sieges, ICRC
15. General description of the security situation, EUAA Syria Security Situation
16. Conflict-induced displacement and return, EUAA Syria Security Situation (July 2026)
17. Syrian Arab Republic: Homs Governorate Profile, Daleel Madani (June 2026)

Initially written Sep 17, 2026 · Reviewed: Sep 17, 2026; Sep 18, 2026; Sep 30, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Sep 18, 2026; Sep 30, 2026; Oct 25, 2026

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