The insurgents claimed on their Military Operations Department channel on the Telegram app Thursday that they have entered Hama and are marching toward its center.

“Our forces are taking positions inside the city of Hama,” the channel quoted a local commander identified as Maj. Hassan Abdul-Ghani as saying.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition war monitor, said gunmen have entered parts of the city, mainly the neighborhoods of Sawaaeq and Zahiriyeh to the northwest. It added that gunmen are also on the edge of the northwestern neighborhood of Kazo.

“If Hama falls, it means that the beginning of the regime’s fall has started,” the Observatory’s chief, Rami Abdurrahman, told The Associated Press.

Hama is a major intersection point in Syria that links that country’s center with the north as well the east and the west. It is about 200 kilometers (125 miles) north of the capital, Damascus, Assad’s seat of power. Hama province also borders the coastal province of Latakia, a main base of popular support for Assad.