Syrian army raises flag over Deraa, cradle of revolt
Assad’s forces win back city where the brutal seven-year civil war began
The Syrian army on Thursday entered the southern city of Deraa and raised the national flag over the birthplace of the revolt that spawned the seven-year civil war, state television said.
The army hoisted the flag near the post office, the national broadcaster reported, the only government building in the area of the city that had been in rebel hands since the early days of the uprising that began in 2011.
Syrian rebels agreed to surrender Deraa, the first city to revolt against President Bashar Assad, activists said on Thursday.
Protests in Deraa in 2011 against the government’s mistreatment of teenage detainees ignited a national revolt against decades of authoritarian rule. Syria descended into a full-blown civil war that has claimed the lives of about 400,000 people and displaced more than five million as refugees.
Ahmad Masalmeh, a media activist once based in Deraa, said fighters in the city had accepted an offer of amnesty from the government and let back in the state institutions and symbols of government rule.
Rebels refusing to accept the deal will be exiled with their families to other rebel-held parts of the country.
Government forces launched an offensive to recapture south-west Syria and the areas neighbouring Jordan and Israel on June 19.
Syrian state media reported on Wednesday that rebels in Deraa had agreed to surrender their heavy and medium weapons.
Meanwhile, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday told Russian President Vladimir Putin that Israel would not seek to topple Bashar Al Assad as president of Syria, but Moscow should encourage Iranian forces to leave the country, a senior Israeli official told Reuters.
The official made the comments just hours after Israel shot down what it described as a Syrian drone that had entered its airspace.
Israel has been on high alert since Mr Al Assad’s forces advanced on rebels in Deraa, near the Golan Heights, much of which Israel captured from Syria in 1967 and annexed in a move not recognised internationally.
Israel is worried that Mr Al Assad could allow his Iranian and Hezbollah reinforcements to entrench near Israeli lines or that Syrian forces may defy a 1974 Golan demilitarisation agreement.
“Russia has an active interest in seeing a stable Assad regime and we in getting the Iranians out. These can clash or align,” said the Israeli official, who requested anonymity.
“We won’t take action against the Assad regime,” the official quoted Mr Netanyahu as telling Mr Putin in Moscow.
But David Keyes, a Netanyahu spokesman, denied that the prime minister had made that statement to Mr Putin.
Asked to summarise Israeli policy on Syria, Mr Keyes said: “We don’t get involved in the civil war. We will act against anyone who acts against us.”
The anonymous Israeli official said Russia was working to distance Iranian forces from the Golan and had proposed that they be kept 80 kilometres away but that this fell short of Israel’s demand for their full exit along with that of Iraniansponsored militias.
Mr Putin met Ali Akbar Velayati, a senior adviser to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, hours after speaking with Mr Netanyahu, the Kremlin said on Thursday, but without offering further details of the talks.
Rebel fighters accepted an offer of amnesty from the government and let back in symbols of government rule AHMAD MASALMEH Media activist in Deraa