The Syrian legal army have retaken a part of the strategic city of Homs which had been held by rebel forces amid heavy fighting.

The central city has been at the heart of the two-year uprising against President Bashar al Assad.

“Units of our noble army have completely restored security and stability to Khalidiya neighbourhood,” state news agency SANA said.

The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition monitoring group, said clashes were continuing in Khalidiya on Monday morning.

But it said Mr Assad’s forces had retaken most of the district, tightening their siege on the few remaining rebel areas in the centre of the city.

The army gains come exactly a month after it started an offensive in Homs as part of a drive to secure an axis linking Damascus to the Mediterranean.

The capture of Khalidiya would be the second major setback for rebels in central Syria in as many months.

In early June, regime forces captured the strategic town of Qusair in Homs province near the border with Lebanon. Troops have also captured the town of Talkalakh, another border town in the province.

The province of Homs is Syria’s largest, and runs from the Lebanese frontier in the west all the way to the border with Iraq and Jordan in the east.

The city of Homs holds strategic value because it serves as a crossroads: it is on the main highway from Damascus in the south to the north of the country as well as to the coastal region, which is a stronghold of President Assad’s Alawite sect.

One hundred thousand people have been killed in Syria’s two year conflict, which started with peaceful protests against Mr Assad’s rule in March 2011.

Nearly two million refugees have fled the war, which has become an increasingly sectarian conflict between the mainly Sunni Muslim rebels and supporters of Mr Assad.

Complicating the conflict has been the increasing involvement of foreign fighters from neighbouring countries and even, in small numbers, from the West.

The UN has been relatively powerless to take action as the countries that are members of the Security Council have differing allegiances and views over how best to resolve it.

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