Bastion of rebellion falls in Homs Syrian government troops have won control of a central district of Homs, crushing one of the last rebel bastions of the city once dubbed "the capital of the revolution," activists and state media have reported. The siege of the district of Khalidiya lasted more than two years, and its capture is a symbolic and strategic coup for the regime, raising the morale of its soldiers and pushing the insurgency from its most important stronghold in central Syria. In a victorious broadcast, Syrian state television announced the "collapse of the terrorists' citadel" of Khalidiya, claiming the army had "restored security and stability across the neighbourhood." Symbolic victory: The devastated rebel stronghold of the Khalidiya district in Homs. On Tuesday, the Skype accounts of more than a dozen activists who had spent two years living in the area - always plugged into a satellite internet connection to send news of government attacks to the outside world - were offline. Two media activists who escaped Khalidiya hours before government troops entered the neighbourhood told London's The Telegraph that about 90 per cent of the district had been retaken. "All the infrastructure and most of the district is completely destroyed," said one activist, going by the name Mohammed. Photographs of the area showed that buildings along entire streets had collapsed and those still standing were mostly badly damaged. After Khalidiya, the army had turned its focus to the last rebel-held part of Homs, the old city, locals said, where little more than 1000 rebel fighters remain. It will be a difficult fight for the army as the streets are so narrow that they cannot bring their tanks. They will shell it very, very heavily until it is destroyed," said a resident who declined to be named. Clearing the insurgency from Homs is a strategically vital manoeuvre for the Syrian regime, as it straddles the route linking the capital Damascus to the coastal areas of Latakia and Tartus that are a heartland for President Bashar al-Assad's minority Alawite sect. Losing Homs would leave the rebels with their chaotic and fracturing control of the north and a small amount of terrain along the southern border with Jordan. Save for a few small and isolated pockets, the regime would have won back Syria's central core. Government soldiers had long surrounded Khalidiya, seeking to choke food and weapon supplies to the rebels. In the past month, the army, backed by fighters from the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, stepped up its attack. When The Telegraph spoke to rebels in Khalidiya earlier this week, they said the attack was "worse than Baba Amr," another bastion whose destruction and bloodshed attracted the attention of the international community. "In every single second you can hear the sound of mortars and rockets and air strikes," said an activist calling himself Abu Rami. Several hundred civilians are reported to have been living in the district, sheltering in between the solid walls or in the basements that remained, nourishing themselves from dwindling supplies. Rebel fighters and diplomats said Salim Idris, the head of the rebel Free Syrian Army, tried to send in ammunition and guns but the area was too tightly surrounded for significant help to get in. A rebel fighter called Adnan, 27, said the outlook was so bleak that he and his colleagues wore suicide belts to detonate should they be captured.