The announcement came hours after militant factions said they had entered the city and were marching toward the centre.

The Syrian army said it redeployed from Hama and took positions outside the city to protect the lives of civilians.

The capture of Hama, Syria’s fourth largest city, is another blow for Assad days after insurgents captured much of the northern city of Aleppo, the country’s largest city.

On Thursday morning, Syrian insurgents said they entered Hama after three days of intense clashes with the Syrian army on its outskirts, part of an ongoing offensive.

The Syrian army said in a statement later that a number of troops were killed after resisting the insurgents for days. It accused the attackers of relying on suicide attacks to break through the defences of the city.

Hama is one of the few cities that remained under full army control during Syria's conflict, which broke out in March 2011. Its capture would be a major setback for President Bashar Assad.

The offensive is being led by the terrorist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham as well as an umbrella group of Turkish-backed Syrian militias called the Syrian National Army.

Their sudden capture of the northern city of Aleppo, an ancient business hub, was a stunning prize for Assad's opponents and reignited the conflict which had been largely stalemated for the past few years.

The next target of the insurgents is likely to be the central city of Homs, the country's third largest. Homs is about 40 kilometres (25 miles) south of Hama.

Aleppo's takeover marked the first opposition attack on the city since 2016 when a Russian air campaign retook it for Assad after militants had initially seized it. 

Tens of thousands of people have been displaced by the renewed fighting, which began with the surprise insurgent offensive Nov. 27.

The insurgents claimed on their Military Operations Department channel on the Telegram app Thursday that they had entered Hama and were marching toward its centre.

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

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition war monitor, said fierce battles were fought inside Hama.

“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 before the city's capture.

Hama is a major intersection point in Syria that links that country’s centre with the north as well as the east and the west. It is about 200 kilometres (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.