Town near Turkey border falls to Syrians
BEIRUT—Syrian troops and allied militiamen Wednesday pushed deeper into a rebel stronghold in the northwestern province of Latakia, the government and opposition activists said.
The insurgents in the opposition-held area near the Turkish border were faltering after the town of Salma fell to government loyalists late Tuesday. Salma’s fall marked one of the most significant military victories by the Syrian military since Russia began airstrikes in the country in September to shore up President Bashar Assad’s forces.
On Wednesday, government troops seized the villages of Mrouniyah and Marj Kawkah near Salma as they continued their advances in the region, aided by Russian firepower.
Salma, part of mountainous chains near the border with Turkey — known as Jabal al-Akrad and Jabal al-Turkmen — has been under rebel control for the past three years.
The town, where members of Assad’s Alawite minority sect once coexisted with majority Sunni Muslims, overlooks the largely Alawite coast and is about 7 miles from the Turkish border. Turkey is a key supporter of insurgents in the area, which is mostly inhabited by Syrian Turkmen, an ethnic minority with close ties to Turkey.
“Whoever controls Salma gains control of all those surrounding areas which it overlooks,” said Zakariya Ahmad, an opposition activist in the nearby Idlib province.
He said the town fell after 93 days of fighting, and daily barrel bombs and airstrikes. He said activists in the region had reported 92 airstrikes believed to be Russian on Salma in the past 24 hours before it was fully seized by government troops.
“It was hell on earth,” he said.
Salma’s capture further improves Assad’s position ahead of planned peace talks with the opposition in Geneva scheduled for Jan. 25, and came as high-level U.S., Russian, U.N. and other diplomats met privately in Geneva on Wednesday to discuss those talks.
But rebel groups said they are rejecting peace talks unless humanitarian conditions mentioned in a U.N. resolution are fulfilled.
In a statement Wednesday, the Free Syrian Army and 33 other factions and rebel groups — including the powerful Army of Islam — say the humanitarian clauses specified in the resolution must be met.
Unless this happens, the statement says: “We reject going ahead with any negotiations.”
The U.N. has been urging the belligerents in Syria’s fiveyear conflict to the negotiating table to find a resolution to a civil war that has killed more than 250,000 people and displaced half of the country’s population.
The recapture of Salma is the latest in a string of recent government military achievements, supported by Russian air power and Lebanon’s Shiite militant Hezbollah group.
Russia began airstrikes in Syria on Sept. 30 against the Islamic State group and “other terrorists,” but many of the airstrikes have targeted areas where the Islamic State group has no presence.
Jabal al-Akrad, where Wednesday’s fighting was focus, is close to the rebel-held northwestern province of Idlib, which also has been targeted frequently by Russian warplanes. It is controlled by a consortium of mainstream and extremist insurgent groups, including the ultraconservative Ahrar al-Sham and the Nusra Front.
Latakia province includes strongholds of Assad and the Alawite religious minority.
Sharif Shehadeh, a member of Syria’s parliament, said the capture of Salma “effectively brings the entire coastal area under Syrian army control.”
He said the combination of Syrian ground troops and Russian air cover was proving extremely effective, and he predicted “big changes” on the battlefield by midyear.