Fighting rages around Syrian airbase
Rebels attack airfields, airports to ground air-power advantage
BEIRUT • Syrian troops and rebels fought intense battles Thursday around a strategic airbase in the country’s north and a suburb of the capital that government forces have been trying to capture since last month, activists and state media said.
The fighting is part of the escalating violence in a Syrian civil war that the United Nations estimates has killed more than 60,000 people since the revolt against President Bashar Assad began in March 2011.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said rebels stormed parts of the Taftanaz airbase in the northwestern province of Idlib before withdrawing. The staterun SANA news agency said government forces protecting the base “repelled the terrorists’ attempt to attack the airport” and inflicted heavy losses. The Syrian regime routinely refers to rebel forces as “terrorists.”
The Observatory said rebels resumed their assault early Thursday in an attempt to capture the base, which has resisted several opposition efforts to take the facility in recent months.
The rebels have been pursuing a strategy of attacking airports and military airfields, targeting five airbases in Idlib and the nearby province of Aleppo, trying to chip away at the government’s air power, which poses the biggest obstacle to advances by opposition fighters.
With its troops struggling to make headway — let alone gain ground — against the rebels in the field, the government has increasingly relied on its warplanes and helicopters to target opposition forces.
The Observatory and the Local Co-ordination Committees, another activist group, reported clashes, air raids and shelling in several suburbs of the capital Damascus, including Daraya, which the regime has been trying to capture from hundreds of opposition fighters for weeks.
The pro-government al-Watan daily said Thursday that the army destroyed rebel strongholds in Daraya and inflicted heavy losses, adding that the area would be declared safe later in the day.
Daraya lies in a key location, and a government takeover there would provide a boost to defence of Damascus.
Al-Watan said thousands of rebels from the extremist Jabhat al-Nusra group have holed up in Daraya in preparation to storm Damascus. Jabhat al-Nusra, which has been branded a terrorist organization by the U.S. and which Washington claims is affiliated with al-Qaida, has been among the most effective fighting forces on the rebel side.
One of the air strikes hit a building in the Damascus suburb of Douma. Amateur videos showed the top floor of the building heavily damaged as wounded people were rushed away. Many of the wounded were covered with dust.
The Observatory and the LCC said eight people were killed Thursday in Douma and nearby areas.
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