News from numerous sources about the Levant countries: Palestine, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan

March 24, 2014

BEIRUT (AP) — Hard-line Islamic rebels captured a small town in northwestern Syria near the Turkish border as part of their offensive in the rugged coastal region that is a bastion of support for President Bashar Assad, activists said Monday.

Fighters from an array of armed opposition groups seized the predominantly Armenian Christian town of Kassab on Sunday. The rebels, including militant from the al-Qaida-affiliated Nusra Front, have also wrested control of a nearby border crossing to Turkey.

The advances, while minor in terms of territory, provided a boost to a beleaguered rebellion that has suffered a string of battlefield losses in recent weeks. Forces loyal to Assad have captured several towns near Syria’s border with Lebanon as part of a government drive to sever rebel supply lines across the porous frontier.

Rebels launched their offensive on Friday in Latakia province, which is the ancestral home of the Assad family and a stronghold of his minority Alawite sect, the Shiite offshoot community that is a main pillar of support for his rule. Since then, the fighting has focused around Kassab and the nearby border crossing.

A member of the president’s family who was also an army commander was buried in Latakia on Monday a day after he died in the battle for Kassab, the Syrian state news agency SANA said. Hilal Assad was the commander of the pro-government National Defense Forces.

Rebels were in control of the center of Kassab on Monday but clashes were raging in the hills outside of town, said Rami Abdurrahman, the director of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Government warplanes were conducting airstrikes on several positions in the area, including Nabeh al-Murr and the scattering of homes and fields surrounding Kassab, the Observatory said. There was no immediate word on casualties.

A Syrian state reporter speaking on TV from outside Kassab Monday said the government had captured several Nusra Front fighters, and that the army is determined to take back the ground it has ceded. A pillar of white smoke could be seen rising above the green, forested hills behind the reporter.

In an amateur video posted online, two opposition fighters stand on a rooftop in Kassab and raise their arms in celebration. A checkpoint near the post office, replete with sandbags and oil drums painted like the Syrian flag, sits abandoned. The streets are deserted. The camera pans past the base of a smashed statue that the narrator says was of Assad’s late father and Syria’s former leader, Hafez.

The video appears genuine and corresponded to other AP reporting. Damascus claims the rebels entered Syria from Turkey, and has accused Ankara of pursuing “aggressive policies” toward Syria. On Sunday, Turkey’s military said it shot down a Syrian MiG-23 after it entered Turkey’s airspace. Syria says the jet was flying over Syrian territory when it was hit.

Turkey, a NATO member, is one of the main backers of the 3-year-old rebellion against Assad. Ankara allows rebels to use Turkish territory as a logistical and support base, and weapons and fighters move fairly freely across the border into opposition-held parts of northern Syria.

The ongoing rebel offensive in Latakia is not the opposition’s first significant incursion in the province. Last August, a mix of moderate and extremist rebel brigades captured around a dozen villages in the Latakia mountains, before a government counteroffensive expelled them.

Afterward, Human Rights Watch said nearly 200 civilians, including children, the elderly and the disabled, were killed in the attack. It said rebel abuses during the operation amounted to war crimes. Now in its fourth year, Syria’s conflict has killed more than 140,000 people, forced more than 2 million people to seek refuge abroad, and triggered a massive humanitarian crisis across the region.

The U.N. Security Council last month demanded immediate access everywhere in Syria to deliver humanitarian aid to millions of people in need. It also called for an end to sieges of populated areas, and a halt to all attacks against civilians, including indiscriminate shelling and aerial attacks using barrel bombs in populated areas.

In a report released Monday, Human Rights Watch said the Assad government has continued its sweeping aerial campaign against opposition-held areas of the divided city of Aleppo in defiance of the U.N. resolution.

“New satellite photos and witness accounts show the brutality unleashed on parts of Aleppo,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director for the New York-based group. “Use of barrel bombs in residential neighborhoods has done the expected: killed hundreds of civilians and driven thousands from their homes.”

Barrel bombs are makeshift devices packed with hundreds of kilograms (pounds) of explosives as well as scraps of metal. Pushed out of the back of helicopters, the crude weapons cause massive damage on impact.

The right group’s report said it used satellite imagery to identify at least 340 places in rebel-controlled areas of Aleppo that were damaged between early November and Feb. 20. The majority of the sites bore signatures of damage consistent with barrel bombs, it said.

Human Rights Watch also called on the Security Council to impose an arms embargo on Syria, including on the purchase or servicing of helicopters. It said such a measure would limit the government’s ability to carry out airstrikes.

Associated Press writer Bassem Mroue contributed to this report.

February 18, 2014

BEIRUT (AP) — Syrian government troops have regained full control of a village in the central province of Hama after ousting rebels accused of killing dozens of people there, state media said as activists reported army reinforcements in the south on Tuesday.

State news agency SANA said government troops took control of the village of Maan on Monday after destroying the last “hideouts of terrorists, who came into the village and committed a massacre.” Syria refers to rebels fighting to overthrow President Bashar Assad as terrorists. The nearly 3-year-old conflict has become increasingly sectarian, pitting Sunni Muslim rebels against Assad’s government that is predominantly Alawite, a sect of Shiite Islam.

Opposition activists have also reported sectarian killings in Maan earlier this month. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least 40 people, mostly members of the minority Alawite sect had been killed when hard-line, anti-Assad Islamic fighters overran the village Feb.9.

In southern Syria, the army was reinforcing its positions in an effort to dislodge rebels from the area near the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. Rami Abdurrahman, the Observatory’s head, said there is heavy fighting in the hilly area just south of Quinetra city, the capital of the province known by the same name. He said the army is bringing more tanks, heavy artillery and troops to the region that has been under control of hard-line Islamic rebel groups for months.

The government’s apparent showdown with the rebels in the south comes a day after Syrian opposition named a news military chief. Brig. Gen. Abdul-Ilah al-Bashir hails from southern Syria and was an army commander in Quinetra until 2012 when defected to the opposition.

The Observatory also reported heavy government shelling of Yabroud, the last rebel-held town near Syria’s border with Lebanon. Yabroud is located in the mountainous Qalamoun region. Government troops, backed by Lebanese Hezbollah fighters have been on a crushing offensive there since early December, trying to sever a main thoroughfare for rebels from Lebanon.

January 08, 2014

BEIRUT (AP) — Syrian rebels on Wednesday seized control of a hospital in the northern city of Aleppo that was used as a base for the area by their al-Qaida rivals, activists said.

The capture of the hospital was a boost for the rebels, who only the day before saw 20 of their fighters killed in an al-Qaida suicide car bombing in the northern city of Darkoush, said the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

It also underscores the intensity of the rebel infighting that has raged for days between Syrian rebels and their one-time allies, fighters from the extremist Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant. Also in Aleppo, the Observatory said a series of government airstrikes in two rebel-held suburbs late on Tuesday night killed 19 people. There were no further details. The government in Damascus did not comment on the bombings.

The two main rebel camps in Syria fighting against President Bashar Assad’s troops — a chaotic array of rebel brigades and the al-Qaida-linked group — turned their guns on each other last Friday. The clashes have since become the most serious rebel infighting since the uprising against Assad began in March 2011.

The rebel-on-rebel fighting began after tensions, which had simmered for months, erupted into the open after reports that the al-Qaida fighters had tortured and killed a popular doctor. It has since spread from the northern province of Aleppo to nearby Idlib and to the province of Raqqa. At least 300 people have been killed in the infighting, said Rami Abdurrahman, the head of the Observatory.

The clashes add another layer of complexity to the Syrian conflict, less than three weeks ahead of a planned international peace conference to try to resolve the civil war. Syrian rebels seized the hospital in Aleppo’s Qadi Askar quarter that the al-Qaida fighters had overrun months ago and used as their main compound or base for the area, said the Observatory, which relies on a network of activists on the ground.

The Observatory said there were reports, still unconfirmed, that dozens of detainees held by the extremists had been freed. One of the most pressing issues in the rebel infighting is the fate of dozens of Syrian and foreign reporters, media activists, aid workers and civilians abducted and held by the al-Qaida fighters since they fanned into the area in March.

There are fears for the fate of the detainees as the fighting rages and as the al-Qaida group seeks to extoll revenge on their rivals. On Tuesday, the Observatory and other groups reported that at least four activists detained in the Aleppo hospital had been killed.

As the rebel infighting continued, so did clashes between Assad’s forces and rebels. In Douma, a town close to the Syrian capital of Damascus, three people and a child were killed and several were wounded after a government airstrike targeted a house on Tuesday, reported the Observatory and another activist group, the Local Coordination Committees.

Dramatic footage of the aftermath of the strike was uploaded to social media networks. It corresponded with the Associated Press’ reporting of the event. “Be patient, little one, be patient!” a man is seen in one video, calling out to a child who was heard wailing under the rubble of a smashed house. Other men are seen furiously digging to pull out the victims.

Minutes later, a toddler screams as he is seen being pulled out from under the rubble. Another man is seen carrying a dust-covered, lifeless small body to nearby medics who then try to resuscitate the child.

January 05, 2014

BEIRUT (AP) — Syrian opposition fighters battled rival rebels from an al-Qaida-linked faction across parts of northern Syria on Sunday, as deep fissures within the insurgency erupted into some of the most serious and sustained violence between groups opposed to President Bashar Assad since the country’s conflict began.

The clashes, which broke out on Friday and have spread to parts of four provinces, pit an array of moderate and ultraconservative Islamist brigades against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, an extremist group that has become both feared and resented in parts of opposition-held areas for trying to impose its hardline interpretation of Islam.

The fighting did not appear to be a turn in unison by Syrian rebel groups against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, activists and analysts said, but rather an outburst of violence against the al-Qaida-linked group in certain communities where tensions with other opposition factions were already simmering.

In a reflection of the fragmented and localized nature of much of the fighting in Syria’s civil war, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant continued to cooperate with rebel factions against government forces in other parts of the country.

But in some corners of opposition-held northern Syria, the backlash against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant has been brewing for months. The group, which analysts say boasts more than 5,000 fighters, many of whom are foreigners, elbowed its way into rebel-held areas in the spring, co-opting some weaker armed opposition groups and crushing others as it consolidated its grip on new turf.

That infighting has left scores dead on both sides, and has undermined the broader rebel movement’s efforts to oust Assad. It also has strengthened the government’s position ahead of an international peace conference for Syria expected in just over two weeks.

For the West, meanwhile, the rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, as well as another al-Qaida-linked group, the Nusra Front, has been a source of concern, and a major reason that support in Washington and other Western capitals has dwindled in recent months.

Some in northern Syria originally welcomed the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant for imposing a degree of order on the villages and towns that fell under its control. But the group alienated many by employing tactics deemed brutal even by the standards of Syria’s bloody conflict. Its fighters have beheaded captured government fighters, and kidnapped anti-Assad activists, journalists and civilians seen as critical of its rule.

The latest and most serious bout of infighting began Friday after residents in the northern province of Aleppo accused members of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant of killing doctor Hussein Suleiman.

The newly created Islamic Front, an umbrella group of powerful, mostly ultra-conservative Islamic fighters, issued a statement ordering the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant to hand over the doctor’s killers so they could stand trial. The extremist group did not, sparking clashes between the factions in Aleppo province.

Fighting quickly spread to rebel-held areas of the northeastern province of Idlib and the central province of Hama. On Sunday, the violence expanded again, with clashes in the town of Tabaqa in Raqqa province, said Rami Abdurrahman, the director of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group.

But much of the heaviest fighting Sunday took place in pockets of Aleppo province. In the town of Manbij, rebels seized a compound garrisoned by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, activists said. The Observatory said fighters from the al-Qaida-linked group used car bombs, a tactic usually reserved for attacking government forces, for the first time to defend its territory.

In the town of Tal Rafaat north of Aleppo city, insurgents from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant ambushed a rebel convoy, killing at least 14 fighters from the Liwa al-Tawhid brigade, which is a member of the Islamic Front, the Observatory said.

The Observatory’s Abdurrahman also reported heavy fighting in the town of Atareb, in several neighborhoods of Aleppo city itself, as well as in areas of Hama and Idlib provinces. In total, at least 59 fighters — nine of them from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant — were killed Sunday, according to the Observatory.

The Nusra Front, which despite its al-Qaida-links has more of a Syrian bent and is seen as more moderate than the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, has been trying to mediate an end to the clashes, Abdurrahman said.

Some activists hailed the fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant as a second “revolution,” but it seemed unlikely that the battle against the extremist group could unite the constellation of rebel brigades who have failed to forge a unified command over the nearly 3-year conflict against Assad.

While the outburst of fighting against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant is certainly significant, its current impact on the trajectory of the broader Syrian conflict is unclear. At the moment, it doesn’t appear to have wider repercussions, said Charles Lister, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Doha Center who closely follows the conflict.

“For now, this simply represents three days of inter-factional fighting with an overtly anti-ISIS foundation,” he said, using an acronym for the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. “Should ISIS launch a determined counter-attack, then this could come to represent a definitive moment in the Syrian conflict.”

“No matter what takes place in the coming days and weeks, ISIS will remain in Syria in some form, and should it be entirely isolated by all other key fighting groups in Syria, it’s actions will likely become even more harsh than before,” Lister said in emailed comments.

The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant is the rebranded version of al-Qaida’s Iraqi affiliate, which emerged in Iraq’s Sunni-dominated Anbar province following the 2003-U.S. led invasion of Iraq. Last week, the group’s fighters seized control of the key Anbar town of Fallujah, scattering Iraqi government forces. It also claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing that targeted a Shiite-dominated Beirut neighborhood.

The Western-backed Syrian opposition in exile has welcomed the fighting against the Islamic State, as it sees the group as hijacking its efforts to overthrow Assad.

Associated Press writers Yasmine Saker and Diaa Hadid contributed to this report.

December 21, 2013

BEIRUT (AP) — Syrian rebels seized control a strategic hospital near Aleppo, giving a boost to beleaguered anti-government forces in the northern city after days of relentless airstrikes on opposition-held neighborhoods there, activists said Saturday.

The rebels’ capture of Kindi hospital does not drastically alter the broader battle for Aleppo, which has been divided for more than a year between opposition and government forces. But it does provide a lift to a rebel movement that has been dogged in recent months by infighting that allowed President Bashar Assad’s forces to chip away at rebel-held territory on several fronts.

For months, rebels had been trying to capture Kindi hospital, which is close to the besieged central prison on the edge of town and where the government is believed to be holding thousands of detainees.

The hospital finally fell to the rebels on Friday, according to two activist groups — the Aleppo Media Center and the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Aleppo-based activist Abu al-Hassan Marea said the rebels who overran the hospital included both conservative Muslim groups and al-Qaida-linked factions.

Observatory director Rami Abdurrahman said at least 42 government troops were killed in Friday’s fighting, and at least 19 Syrian rebels and an unknown number of foreign fighters. A Syrian freelance photographer who worked for foreign news outlets, including Reuters, also was killed in the fighting, activists said. The photographer, Molhem Barakat, was with his brother, a rebel fighter, inside a carpet factory near the hospital when they were both killed, said Hassoun Abu Faisal of the Aleppo Media Center. Activists also circulated a photograph of Barakat’s corpse, which matched other images of him.

Abu Faisal said Barakat, who activists said was 18 years old, began working as a photographer about five months ago, was considered talented and quickly sold photographs to foreign media. Reuters said Saturday that Barakat had taken pictures for the news agency on a freelance basis.

Media watchdog groups have ranked Syria the world’s most dangerous country for reporters. The Committee to Project Journalists says 22 journalists have been killed in Syria this year, not counting Barakat. More than 30 journalists are believed to be currently held by the Syrian government or rebel forces.

Meanwhile, Syrian government forces continued dumping so-called barrel bombs — containers containing hundreds of pounds (kilograms) of explosives and fuel — over opposition-held parts of Aleppo. The British-based Observatory said at least six people were killed in Saturday’s air raids, but other groups gave higher death tolls.

The aid group Doctors Without Borders has said that over four days this week government airstrikes killed at least 189 people and wounded 879 more. Human Rights Watch, meanwhile, said in a statement Saturday that the airstrikes in Aleppo were indiscriminate and unlawful.

“Government forces have really been wreaking disaster on Aleppo in the last month, killing men, women, and children alike,” said Ole Solvang, senior emergencies researcher at the New York-based group. “The Syrian Air Force is either criminally incompetent, doesn’t care whether it kills scores of civilians — or deliberately targets civilian areas.”

Syria’s civil war, now into its third year, has killed more than 120,000 people, according to activists, while millions have been forced from their homes by the fighting. Syrian officials have not commented on the air raids in Aleppo, the country’s largest city and former commercial hub. Aleppo has been a major front in the civil war since the rebels launched an offensive there in mid-2012. The city has been carved into opposition- and government-held areas.

The escalation comes ahead of peace talks scheduled to begin on Jan. 22 in Switzerland. The timing has sparked speculation that Assad may be trying to strengthen his position on the ground and expose opposition weaknesses before sitting down at the negotiating table.

“I think it will have the reverse effect,” Aleppo-based activist Abu Raed said via Skype. “The helicopters come. We stop and look. We keep looking until the barrel drops. We shout out God’s name. The civil defense comes to dig out people. The media activists go film.”

Both Marea and Raed asked that they be identified only by their nicknames, fearing for their own security. In Damascus, the state news agency said the capital and much of southern Syrian plunged into darkness after a rebel attack struck a gas pipeline that supplies a power plant. Blackouts hit Damascus and other government controlled areas on a regular basis.

Associated Press writers Ryan Lucas in Beirut and Sylvia Hui in London contributed to this report.