Live: Over 100,000 bodies found in mass grave near Damascus

Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the president of Turkey, has stressed the need to maintain Syria's territorial integrity.

Speaking this afternoon in Gaziantep, a southern Turkish city that hosts thousands of Syrian refugees and has acted as a base for aid workers operating in Syria, Erdogan said: "There is now a new reality in Syria, politically and diplomatically."

"Syria belongs to Syrians with all its ethnic, sectarian and religious elements," he said in a speech.

"The people of Syria are the ones who will decide the future of their own country."

Turkey backs several rebel groups in the Syrian National Army coalition, but denies helping the current rebel offensive.

A senior Turkish security source told MEE last week that Ankara actually tried to prevent the offensive to avoid further escalating tensions in the region, especially given Israel's wars on Gaza and Lebanon.

However, efforts to use channels established by a 2019 de-escalation agreement to halt Russian and Syrian government air strikes targeting residential areas of rebel-held Idlib province had not yielded results.

“In response to these attacks, Syrian opposition groups launched a limited operation towards Aleppo, targeting the areas from which the attacks originated,” the source said.

“What was initially planned as a limited operation expanded as regime forces began fleeing their positions.”

Here is a selection of some images coming out of Syria today.

In Deir Ezzor, Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) fighters are celebrating their control.

Syrian government forces withdrew from the eastern city on Friday to concentrate on defending Homs, with SDF moving in to replace them.

Rebels led by Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham are meanwhile fighting government forces in Homs. Here's a quiet moment earlier in the day as fighters moved towards the city from Hama, which they took on Friday.

And in Salamiyah, a town in central Syria's Hama province, life appears to be going back to normal.

Donald Trump, the man who will occupy the Oval Office in January, has commented on developments in Syria.

"Syria is a mess, but is not our friend, & THE UNITED STATES SHOULD HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH IT. THIS IS NOT OUR FIGHT. LET IT PLAY OUT. DO NOT GET INVOLVED!" the president-elect posted on his social media platform Truth Social.

It should be noted that crippling US sanctions have contributed to the collapse of the impoverished Syrian government.

There are roughly 900 US troops in Syria, where they back the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces.

According to Robert F Kennedy Jr, Trump wants to end the US military presence in Syria.

"We were talking about the Middle East, and he took a piece of paper and he drew on it [a] map of the Middle East with all the nations on it, which most Americans couldn't do," he told right-wing broadcaster Tucker Carlson last month.

"He was he was particularly looking at the border between Syria and Turkey, and he said, 'We have 500 men on the border of of Syria and Turkey and a little encampment that was bombed.'"

Kennedy said Trump was concerned the soldiers would be "cannon fodder" if Turkey and the Syrian Kurds went to war. 

Syrian state TV has reported that Bashar al-Assad remains in Damascus.

On Friday, the Wall Street Journal reported Assad's children and wife travelled to Russia last week and his brothers-in-law went to the United Arab Emirates.

Egyptian and Jordanian officials have been urging the president to leave Syria, the WSJ said, a claim denied by Jordan's foreign ministry.

Assad has been president of Syria since his father, Hafez al-Assad, died in 2000. The Syrian war began when Assad ordered soldiers to violently put down pro-democracy protests in 2011.

According to Iraqi state TV, more than 1,000 Syrian soldiers crossed into Iraq's Anbar province through al-Qaim border crossing.

The soldiers were reportedly marooned in eastern Syria and unable to safely join up with Syrian government forces in Homs.

Iraq is very concerned about developments in Syria, fearful that it will have repercussions like in 2014, when Islamic State fighters flooded across the border and seized scores of Iraqi towns and cities that took four years to liberate.

Iraqi security sources told MEE that tens of thousands of border guards, soldiers and paramilitaries have been deployed along Iraq's border with Syria to ensure the country's security.

In Doha, the foreign ministers of Russia, Iran and Turkey have met on the sidelines of a conference to discuss the situation in Syria.

Russia and Iran are Assad's two greatest backers, and their intervention in the conflict appeared to have won the Syrian president the war. Until now.

Today, Sergei Lavrov and Abbas Araghchi, the foreign ministers of Russia and Iran, are calling for dialogue with the Syrian opposition.

"The most important thing is to start political talks between the Syrian government and legitimate opposition groups," Araghchi said after meeting Lavrov and Turkey's Hakan Fidan.

His words echoed comments made earlier by Lavrov, who said: "We will oppose this in every possible way, we will support the legitimate Syrian authorities. And at the same time, of course, we will actively promote the need to resume dialogue with the opposition."

Turkey hosts many Syrian opposition figures and is supportive of the rebel advance.

The battle for Homs, a strategic city between Damascus and Assad's coastal heartlands, continues.

Syrian rebels entered the city from the north and east on Saturday, a resident, army and rebel sources told Reuters.

Jihad Yazigi, an expert on Syria and its economy, told MEE that the fall of Homs would be a disaster for the Assad government and may push his main backers Russia and Iran to act so as not to lose their ally.

"Losing Homs would not necessarily mean the regime falling, but it would surely mean that the Russians and the Iranians are going to push for a regime change, or a meaningful policy change," he explained.

"Because they would be afraid to lose everything."

Hello and welcome to Middle East Eye's Syria live blog.

Events are happening at breakneck speed. On Saturday alone, rebel forces have taken control of various areas of Damascus' southern suburbs, including Daraya and Moamadhia, towns that were besieged by Bashar al-Assad's army for years before surrendering in 2016.

Syrian troops also withdrew from Quneitra, the province and ghost town on Syria's border with Israel and the occupied Golan Heights.

And in the Syrian desert, rebels seized Palmyra, an oasis town also known as Tadmur that is famous for its Roman ruins and notorious prison.

To the north, Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham's advance on Homs, Syria's third-largest city, continues.

Stay with us to watch it all unfold.