Syrian government forces backed by Lebanese Hezbollah militants forged ahead with their assault on a key rebel district in the central city of Homs Sunday, July 28, activists said, according to The Associated Press.

The push on Homs is part of a broader government offensive on rebel-held areas that has seen regime troops retake some of the territory they have lost to opposition fighters in Syria’s more than 2-year-old conflict. Assad’s forces turned their sights on Homs, the country’s third-largest city, after capturing the strategic town of Qusair near the Lebanon border last month.

Government troops have made headway in Homs in recent days, capturing a 13th century landmark mosque in the contested Khaldiyeh neighborhood that had been in rebel hands for more than a year. Homs holds immense symbolic and strategic importance to both sides, and the ferocity of the fighting for control of it has left much of the city in ruins.

Syria’s main exiled opposition group, the Syrian National Coalition, acknowledged that rebels had retreated from parts of Khaldiyeh, calling it a “tactical withdrawal.”

“After the heavy bombardment of the Khaldiyeh area of Homs, using thousands of rockets, explosive barrels and large amounts of heavy weaponry ... Assad forces have managed to overtake a few yards of the land that they have pulverized,” it said in a statement.