HTS leader al-Jolani: Goal is to overthrow Assad

Anti-regime fighters who have taken city after city in a lightning offensive in Syria aim to overthrow Bashar al-Assad, the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) leader said in an interview published on Friday.

After cutting a swathe through government-held territory in northern and central Syria, the anti-regime forces were at the gates of the country's third largest city Homs, a war monitor said.

In a little over a week, the offensive has seen Assad's forces ousted from the major cities of Aleppo and Hama for the first time since the civil war began in 2011.

Should the opposition forces capture Homs, that would cut the seat of power in the capital Damascus from the Mediterranean coast, a key bastion of the Assad clan, which has ruled Syria for the past five decades.

Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, the leader of the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) rebel group, said the goal of the offensive was to end Assad's rule.

"When we talk about objectives, the goal of the revolution remains the overthrow of this regime. It is our right to use all available means to achieve that goal," Jolani told CNN in an interview.

The rebel alliance is led by HTS, which is rooted in the Syrian branch of Al-Qaeda but has sought to soften its image in recent years.

According to Fabrice Balanche, a lecturer at France's Lumiere Lyon 2 university, HTS now controls 20,000 square kilometres (more than 7,700 square miles) of territory, nearly seven times as much as it did before the offensive started.