Syrian army announces capture of key town

AP

A picture shows the bodies of rebel fighters, killed fighting Syrian security forces, lying in Qusair, on Tuesday.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

DAMASCUS: The Syrian army triumphantly announced today the capture of a strategic border town after a three week gruelling battle, telling the nation it has “cleansed” Qusair of rebels and calling it “a message” to Syria’s enemies everywhere.

The capture of the strategoc town, which lies close to the

Lebanese border, solidifies some of the Syrian regime’s recent gains on the ground that have shifted the balance of power in President Bashar Assad’s favour in the Syrian civil war. It comes just a day after France and Britain made back-to-back announcements that the nerve gas sarin was used in Syria’s conflict.

A UN investigation, also released yesterday, said it had “reasonable grounds” to suspect small-scale use of toxic chemicals in at least four attacks in March and April in Syria.

On the ground in the past two months, the Syrian army has moved steadily against rebels in key battleground areas, making advances near the border with Lebanon and considerably lowering the threat to Damascus, the seat of Assad’s government. Syrian troops, backed by scores of Lebanese Hezbollah fighters, launched a wide offensive on Qusair, near the border with Lebanon, on May 19. A rare statement by the Syrian Armed Forces was read out today on state TV, saying the military had restored “peace and security” in Qusair, and that the town’s capture was a “clear message to all those participating in the aggression against Syria.”

The army said it cleared Qusair and surrounding villages in the country’s west of “terrorists,” the term the regime uses for rebels fighting to topple Assad’s government and that a “large number (of rebels) have been killed.

Others surrendered while “the rest escaped” following a decisive push into the town late yesterday, the statement said.

The fall of Qusair provides the best evidence to date that the growing participation of militant Hezbollah fighters alongside Assad’s troops is a potential game changer in the Syrian two-year-old conflict.

The Qusair battle also has laid bare Hezbollah’s role in the Syrian conflict. The Shiite group, which has been fighting alongside Assad’s troops, initially tried to play down its involvement, but could no longer do so after dozens of its fighters were killed in Qusair and buried in large funerals in Lebanon.

The overt involvement of Hezbollah in the Qusair battles has further inflamed sectarian tensions in Syria and Lebanon, drawing retaliation from Syrian rebels on Lebanese Shiite towns and villages near the border with Syria.

Qusair’s fall risks drawing in more revenge attacks.

“The repercussions will be on the Lebanese territories,” Bassam al-Dada, an official in the rebels’ Free Syrian Army, said. “It is the beginning of the end for the group, even inside Lebanon,” he added.

Qusair’s fall deals a huge blow to the opposition, which conceded the town’s loss today.

“The Assad regime and the Iranian militias supporting it have entered Qusair,” a statement by the main Western-backed Syrian National Council said.