Syrian forces capture entire Qusayr region

AFP / RSS

A handout image released by the Syrian Arab News Agency shows security officials inspecting a car bomb explosion in the central Syrian city of Homs, on Saturday.

AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE

BEIRUT: Forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad have now seized all of the Qusayr area in central Syria, state television reported today.

There was television footage being shown of troops

overrunning the last bastion of the rebels in the area.

“Our heroic troops have restored safety and security in Eastern Bweida,” the state television channel said in its news.

The village was the last insurgent-held area in the Qusayr area, which is strategic because of its proximity to the Lebanese border and because it lies on the route linking Damascus to the coast.

Qusayr fell on Wednesday to regime control after a nearly three-week assault by troops and Hezbollah that has joined the conflict in Syria.

The Hezbolla’s involvement in the Syrian conflict is the clearest sign yet of the Lebanese Shiite group’s commitment to the Assad regime.

Hundreds of people who fled Qusayr as it fell had taken refuge in Eastern Bweida. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said it was concerned for the fate of hundreds of fighters and civilians, among them wounded people.

Syrian state television broadcast footage of a barren village devoid of signs of life. Hezbollah also announced the news of Eastern Bweida’s fall on its own television channel, Al-Manar.

As the regime consolidated its grip on Qusayr, amateur video distributed by pro-Hezbollah activists showed unidentified men raising a black flag with the Shiite cry “Ya Hussein” inscribed on it, in a new sign of escalating sectarianism.

While most rebels in Syria are Sunnis, Hezbollah is Shiite and backs the Assad clan, who belong to the minority Alawite sect. An official source who spoke to AFP on condition of anonymity put the death toll at five, adding that six others were wounded. Rebel areas of Homs city have been under tight army siege and daily bombardment for a year.

Car bomb kills 7 in Homs

BEIRUT: A car bomb exploded on Saturday in Homs largely populated by the Shiite offshoot sect that dominates the regime, while government troops pressed an offensive against fleeing rebels in nearby villages, state TV and activists said. Seven people died, according to preliminary reports. But the state-owned Al-Ikhbariya TV said the blast in the southern al-Nozah neighbourhood of Homs city was a suicide bomb. The explosion in a neighborhood populated by Alawites, the sect to which President Bashar Assad belongs, comes as the conflict takes increasingly sectarian overtones. The rebels are largely from Syria’s Sunni Muslim majority and have been joined by Sunni fighters from other countries. The government’s offensive has been backed by fighters from Lebanon’s Shiite militant Hezbollah group.