Syria warplanes pound rebel enclaves in Damascus: NGO

Assad forces break insurgent blockade

BEIRUT, April 15, (Agencies): Syria’s air force on Monday carried out several air strikes on rebel enclaves in and around Damascus, while fresh clashes between troops and rebels raged to the east of the capital, a monitoring group said.

“At least one civilian was killed in an air strike on Qaboon” in northeast Damascus, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, “while regime troops pounded the district of Jubar” in the east.

Amateur video distributed by the Syrian Revolution General Commission (SRGC), a network of activists on the ground, showed a cloud of grey smoke rising after the air raid.

The regime also used warplanes to bombard the rebel-held towns of Yabroud, Douma and Harasta east of Damascus, as well as Sbeineh southwest of the capital, said the Observatory.

Later in the day, fierce clashes broke out near key the Idlib town of Maaret alNuman, which rebels seized last October.

According to a preliminary toll for Monday, at least 22 people were killed in violence across Syria, said the Observatory, which relies on a broad network of activists, doctors and lawyers for its reports.

Recaptures

Meanwhile, Syrian government troops have broken through a six-month rebel blockade in northern Syria and are now fighting to recapture a vital highway, opposition and state media said on Monday.

Rebels had kept the army bottled up in the Wadi al-Deif and Hamidiya military bases in Idlib province. But on Sunday, President Bashar al-Assad’s forces outflanked the rebels and broke through, the pro-government al-Baath newspaper said.

The insurgents counter-attacked on Monday but their front has been weakened in recent weeks due to infighting and the deployment of forces to other battles, activists said.

The break-out from the bases, located outside Maarat al-Nuaman town, may enable the army to recapture the main route into Aleppo, Syria’s largest city, and bolster their fragile supply lines in the heart of the rebel-held north.

Two years into the uprising against Assad, government forces are fighting hard to maintain control of cities. Many rural areas and provincial towns have fallen to the rebels. Aleppo, formerly a business hub, is locked in a stalemate between the rival forces.

Rebels had advanced in northern Syria, near Turkey, and southern Deraa province near Jordan. But government forces have kept the rebels out of central Damascus and hold more than half of Homs city, which links the capital to Assad’s Alawite heartlands near the Mediterranean coast.

March was the bloodiest month yet in a conflict which began as a protest movement against four decades of Assad family rule but has descended into an increasingly sectarian civil war in which at least 70,000 people have been killed.

Sunni Muslim rebels are the backbone of the insurgency, while minorities like the Alawites, from an offshoot of Shi’ite Islam, have largely fought with Assad, who can count on outside support from Russia and Iran.

Western powers, who want to see the end of Assad but do not want to intervene militarily, have been alarmed by the advance of Islamist groups like the Nusra Front in a conflict which has deepened the Middle East’s sectarian divide.

Diplomatic efforts to find a political solution have gone nowhere.

Rebel attacks had forced the army to relinquish many bases in northern Syria and most roads around Aleppo and Idlib province, leaving the remaining government-controlled areas in the north to rely on airlifts for food and weapons.

“The break of the blockade yesterday allowed the army to drive six lorries full of weapons to get into the bases of Wadi Deif and Hamidiya,” Rami Abdelrahman, head of the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, told Reuters.

The pro-opposition observatory said that despite the army gains, neither side had a clear advantage.

Abdelrahman counted more than 50 fighters dead or missing from the battle on Sunday. The army advance was not yet a decisive victory but could reopen battlefields in the north where rebels had the advantage, he said.

“We will see now what happens but if the rebels can push back the regime, they can avoid a major setback. If the regime is able to hold this opening it could take back the whole road and that will have major strategic consequences,” he said.

Protest

Elsewhere, Lebanon on Monday condemned the spillover of fire from Syrian rebel and regime forces onto its territory and said it would protest to the Arab League after artillery fire killed two people on Sunday.

“The safety of every Lebanese citizen and village is the responsibility of the Lebanese state, and any attack from any side is unacceptable,” Social Affairs Minister Wael Abu Faour said after a ministerial meeting.

He said the foreign ministry would “undertake all necessary measures and communications to ensure all sides bear their responsibilities and do not repeat such attacks.”

Abu Faour said the measures would include “the preparation of a memorandum to the Arab League,” which would “protest... any attack regardless of which party was responsible for it.”

The decision, taken by select ministers of the Hezbollah-dominated caretaker government, comes a day after two separate incidents of fire spilling over from Syria.

Shellfire from Syrian has regularly hit Lebanon, on occasion killing Lebanese, but Sunday’s incidents were the first deaths in Hezbollah strongholds in the border region, reportedly from rebel fire.

Security sources reported further shelling on Monday, with two shells landing in the town of Qasr, where one person was killed a day earlier.

Beirut, which has officially followed a policy of “dissociation” from the Syrian conflict, has been reluctant to publicly blame either regime forces or rebel fighters for fire hitting its territory.

The war in neighbouring Syria has exacerbated existing tensions in Lebanon’s multi-confessional population and fractious political system.

Abu Faour said the military was taking unspecified measures “to protect Lebanese citizens from any attack,” without detailing whether the army would return fire across the border.