With the US air war and fighting with Kurds more or less keeping ISIS occupied, the Syrian military is moving apace in the central Hama Province, where they ousted al-Qaeda and its allies from the key town of Morek.

Rebel mouthpiece the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that Morek has more or less entirely fallen, and that it is under the control of the military. Syrian state media’s most recent report merely said they held the majority of the town.

Morek, like many of the otherwise nondescript small towns in central Syria, is important almost exclusively because of its location, in close proximity to the Damascus-Aleppo highway, the most important road in all of Syria.

With the Assad government having secured virtually all of Metro Damascus, they are clearly looking to take back lost territory in the north, and Aleppo, being the nation’s most important city (at least before years of war turned it into a huge no-man’s land), would be an obvious goal for them.