Syrian forces fully control oppn stronghold
BEIRUT — Syrian forces took full control of the town of Yabroud yesterday after driving out opposition fighters, helping President Bashar al Assad secure the land route connecting the capital Damascus with Aleppo and the Mediterranean coast. The fall of Yabroud, the last opposition bastion near the Lebanese border, could sever a vital insurgent supply line from Lebanon and consolidate government control over a swathe of territory from Damascus to the central city of Homs. The army “restored security and stability to Yabroud…after eliminating a large number of mercenaries”, the Syrian military said in a statement hailing the strategic victory. A military source said that about 1,000 armed men had held out on Saturday to fight government forces which had entered eastern districts of Yabroud and captured several hilltops.
“They fought a fierce battle and then from last night until the early hours of today they all pulled out,” he said. The source said the fighters had withdrawn to the nearby villages of Hosh Arab, Fleita and Rankos as well as Arsal, a Lebanese border town 20 km to the northwest. Al Manar television broadcast scenes from Yabroud’s main square where people walked around and talked in apparent safety. Soldiers replaced the three-star flag of the Syrian revolution with the government’s two-star banner. Footage from earlier in the day showed empty streets, shuttered shops and abandoned homes in a main thoroughfare. Heavy gunfire could be heard in the background. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said fighters from the Lebanese armed group, who supported the Syrian army and pro-government fighters in sealing off the frontier area with Lebanon, were now in control of large parts of Yabroud.
The army had dismantled a large number of explosive devices planted by the opposition fighters, Syrian state television said. Thousands of civilians fled Yabroud, a town of about 40,000 to 50,000 people roughly 60 km north of Damascus, and the surrounding areas after it was bombed and shelled last month ahead of the government offensive. The government has been making incremental gains along the land route and around Damascus and Aleppo in the past months, regaining the initiative in the three-year uprising-turned-civil war which has killed more than 140,000 people. The military source said that in parallel to the capture of Yabroud, the army and air force had closed 14 of 18 crossings into Lebanon, where violence has spilled over in the past year. “In the next few days, the battle will be over closing these remaining crossings,” the source said.
Syrian television said the army was targeting fighters between Fleita and Arsal who had withdrawn from Yabroud. Al Manar said air raids had destroyed several trucks carrying fleeing fighters near Arsal. The military dropped barrel bombs on Ras al Maara, a reel-held village 10 km east of the Lebanese border, killing at least six people including two children, according to the Observatory. A local Lebanese official from Arsal told Al Arabiya television he wanted the Lebanese army to secure the border and prevent fighter sfleeing Yabroud from entering his town. “We in Arsal are not ready to accept insurgents. Even if we support the revolution, the insurgents’ battle is in Syria, not in Lebanon. Arsal will not be the place from which war is sparked inside Lebanon,” he said.
A Lebanese security source said that Lebanon’s army was confronting insurgents crossing the border from Syria. Forces in Arsal detained a group of Syrians carrying “weapons of war and ammunition,” Lebanon’s National News Agency said. In a separate incident, the army fired on fighters in a pickup truck near Arsal after they bypassed a checkpoint, but failed to prevent their escape, the security source said. — Reuters