SYRIAN ARMY CRUSHES REBEL PUSH NEAR TURKISH BORDER
Associated Press International
June 15, 2014 Sunday 3:48 PM GMT
by RYAN LUCAS, Associated Press
BEIRUT
BEIRUT (AP) – Government forces flushed opposition fighters from
their last redoubts in northwestern Syria near the Turkish frontier
on Sunday, capturing two villages and restoring government control
over the border crossing, activists and state media said.
The military’s advances fully reversed the gains rebels had made
during their three-month campaign in Latakia province, the rugged
coastal region that is the ancestral heartland of President Bashar
Assad. The counteroffensive’s success is the latest blow to the rebels,
who have suffered a string of bitter recent setbacks in Syria’s more
than three-year-old civil war.
Islamic rebel factions launched their surprise assault in Latakia
in March, pushing south from the Turkish border to seize a string
of villages in the lush, mountainous terrain. The military, nervous
about an incursion in a bastion of government support, dispatched
reinforcements to blunt the rebel advance and eventually turn the tide.
On Sunday, after months of bloody clashes, army troops backed by
fighters from the Lebanese Shiite military group Hezbollah seized the
seaside hamlet of Samra before also taking the village of Kassab and
its adjacent border crossing, said Rami Abdurrahman, the director of
the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
He said there were minor clashes still taking place west of Kassab,
a predominantly Armenian Christian village whose residents fled after
the rebels seized control.
The Syrian army command issued a statement saying that it “restored
security and stability to Kassab.” It also said the operation “smashes
the illusions” of the rebels securing a sea port in Samra or a buffer
zone along the border to use as “a base for launching terrorist acts
against the Syrian people.”
The government refers to those trying to topple Assad as “terrorists.”
Lebanon-based Al-Mayadeen TV, which has a reporter embedded with
Syrian troops, broadcast live footage from Kassab that showed a
blown-out stone building with a smoldering wooden staircase. Soldiers
in camouflage uniforms milled in the streets, and the rocky hills
typical of the area could be seen in the background.
Engineering units were clearing mines and dismantling booby traps in
Kassab, Syria’s pro-government Al-Ikhbariya TV said.
The government made dislodging rebels from Latakia a priority for
strategic as well as symbolic areas. The coastal province is a
stronghold of Assad’s minority Alawite sect, which is an offshoot
of Shiite Islam, and losing control of even a portion of it was an
embarrassment to the government.
Now in its fourth year, Syria’s conflict has spilled far beyond the
country’s borders to shake the foundations of the Middle East.
Last week, an al-Qaida breakaway group known as the Islamic State of
Iraq and the Levant, which holds much of northern and eastern Syria,
overran huge swaths of neighboring Iraq and captured the country’s
second-largest city.
In the wake of its onslaught, the jihadi group has pillaged Iraqi
military bases, carting off Humvees, ammunition and other weapons. The
militants have transferred some of that materiel to Syria to bolster
their forces there.
The Syrian air force has not targeted Islamic State territory with
the same ferocity as it has other rebel factions. But on Saturday
and Sunday, government aircraft bombed facilities belonging to the
extremist group in Hassakeh province bordering Iraq and in the groups’
stronghold of Raqqa province, the Observatory said.
Abdurrahman said the Syrian military appeared to be wary of the
Islamic State’s possessing high-grade military equipment. Among the
places targeted by the airstrikes was Shaddadi, a town just across the
Syrian border from Iraq that activists say is a hub for the movement
of men and equipment across the frontier.
Also Sunday, the state news agency said that some 230 prisoners were
freed under a general amnesty declared by President Bashar Assad
following his re-election in Syria’s June 3 vote. SANA said the
prisoners were released from lockups in the central cities of Homs
and Hama, as well as the northeastern province of Hassakeh.
The Observatory confirmed that detainees were released Sunday, although
it could not provide exact numbers. The group said that more than 1,500
people – a mix of anti-government activists and common criminals –
have been freed under the presidential amnesty since it was announced
on June 9.
International rights groups say there are tens of thousands of
anti-government activists, protesters, opposition supporters imprisoned
in the country. It is not clear how many of them will be covered by
the pardon.
___
Associated Press writer Albert Aji contributed from Damascus, Syria.
From: A. Papazian