| The Guardian | - |
Syria's
civil war edged closer to the home village of Bashar al-Assad on
Tuesday, with opposition groups mounting their second sustained attack
on the area in the conflict.
Bashar al-Assad's home village under threat from Syrian opposition forces
Second sustained attack mounted on area around Qardaha, as government troops protect Syrian leader's ancestral village.
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The Assad regime's
forces launch an air attack after Syrian opposition forces seized areas
around Latakia. Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
Syria's civil war edged closer to the home village of Bashar al-Assad on Tuesday, with opposition groups mounting their second sustained attack on the area in the conflict.
The push, which is entering its second week, has seen government troops and paramilitaries rush to reinforce a coastal enclave near the president's ancestral home, Qardaha, and the port city of Latakia in the country's north-west, minutes from the Turkish border.
The area has proved impenetrable to opposition groups, which have remained 10 miles to the north and were repelled by a regime counterattack last August after briefly seizing 12 Alawite villages during a summer offensive. That rebel attack led to the killing of around 200 civilians, an act labelled a war crime by Human Rights Watch and other international observers.
Rebel groups, among them the jihadist Jabhat al-Nusra, say they are trying to reach the Mediterranean coast, where they hope to open a supply line, a difficult thing to achieve with the Syrian military maintaining dominance over air and sea.
Regime warplanes continued to bomb opposition positions on Tuesday, two days after Turkey downed a Syrian jet which it claimed had flown into its air space while on bombing runs near the border.
Syrian television reported on Tuesday that the pilot of the downed jet had been received on Monday as a hero in his home village near Hama, 60 miles south of the latest fighting.
The downing of the Syrian jet marked the third aerial clash between the two former allies since an uprising against Assad began in March 2011. Syria shot down a Turkish jet in 2012, and Turkey downed a Syrian helicopter last year. All three clashes have been in the same bitterly contested corner of the war ravaged country.
Opposition groups have mounted several offensives in northern Syria after ousting radical jihadist fighters from the Islamic State of Iraq in Sham (Isis) over three months of brutal battles.
Isis had maintained a stronghold in the northern Latakia region. Its influence spread across the countryside and into Aleppo, Syria's largest city. However, the recent battles have seen the group retreat to the town of al-Bab, just east of Aleppo, from where it controls much of eastern Syria and Anbar province in Iraq.
The opposition is now in control of the Kassab border crossing to Turkey, and the Armenian Christian town of the same name.
Attacks on the Alawite areas to the east have so far been sporadic; however, a cousin of the Syrian president, Hilal al-Assad, was killed on Sunday in a nearby village, apparently by a rebel rocket attack.
Assad led a local unit of the National Defence Front (NDF), a loyalist group drawn mainly from the Alawite sect, which is deployed in large numbers in the area. The NDF, the Syrian military, and an Iraqi militia, Abu al-Fadl al-Abbas, are also defending the area.
The renewed fighting in the north has been matched by relative quiet elsewhere in Syria. Battered forces from both sides appear to have drawn breath in Damascus and the south. And regime forces continue mopping-up operations in the Qalamoun mountains near Lebanon, where Hezbollah and regime troops last week succeeded in ousting opposition groups after more than four months of brutal fighting.
Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia, one of two main backers of the Syrian opposition, on Tuesday said the world had betrayed Syria's rebels. Crown Prince Salman Bin Abdul Aziz said the Syrian crisis was a catastrophe, and called for "changing the balance of forces" on the ground.
A central driver of the war, which has killed in excess of 150,000 people and displaced up to nine million, is a battle for influence between Saudia Arabia and Iran, which has staunchly backed the Assad regime throughout the crisis.
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The push, which is entering its second week, has seen government troops and paramilitaries rush to reinforce a coastal enclave near the president's ancestral home, Qardaha, and the port city of Latakia in the country's north-west, minutes from the Turkish border.
The area has proved impenetrable to opposition groups, which have remained 10 miles to the north and were repelled by a regime counterattack last August after briefly seizing 12 Alawite villages during a summer offensive. That rebel attack led to the killing of around 200 civilians, an act labelled a war crime by Human Rights Watch and other international observers.
Rebel groups, among them the jihadist Jabhat al-Nusra, say they are trying to reach the Mediterranean coast, where they hope to open a supply line, a difficult thing to achieve with the Syrian military maintaining dominance over air and sea.
Regime warplanes continued to bomb opposition positions on Tuesday, two days after Turkey downed a Syrian jet which it claimed had flown into its air space while on bombing runs near the border.
Syrian television reported on Tuesday that the pilot of the downed jet had been received on Monday as a hero in his home village near Hama, 60 miles south of the latest fighting.
The downing of the Syrian jet marked the third aerial clash between the two former allies since an uprising against Assad began in March 2011. Syria shot down a Turkish jet in 2012, and Turkey downed a Syrian helicopter last year. All three clashes have been in the same bitterly contested corner of the war ravaged country.
Opposition groups have mounted several offensives in northern Syria after ousting radical jihadist fighters from the Islamic State of Iraq in Sham (Isis) over three months of brutal battles.
Isis had maintained a stronghold in the northern Latakia region. Its influence spread across the countryside and into Aleppo, Syria's largest city. However, the recent battles have seen the group retreat to the town of al-Bab, just east of Aleppo, from where it controls much of eastern Syria and Anbar province in Iraq.
The opposition is now in control of the Kassab border crossing to Turkey, and the Armenian Christian town of the same name.
Attacks on the Alawite areas to the east have so far been sporadic; however, a cousin of the Syrian president, Hilal al-Assad, was killed on Sunday in a nearby village, apparently by a rebel rocket attack.
Assad led a local unit of the National Defence Front (NDF), a loyalist group drawn mainly from the Alawite sect, which is deployed in large numbers in the area. The NDF, the Syrian military, and an Iraqi militia, Abu al-Fadl al-Abbas, are also defending the area.
The renewed fighting in the north has been matched by relative quiet elsewhere in Syria. Battered forces from both sides appear to have drawn breath in Damascus and the south. And regime forces continue mopping-up operations in the Qalamoun mountains near Lebanon, where Hezbollah and regime troops last week succeeded in ousting opposition groups after more than four months of brutal fighting.
Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia, one of two main backers of the Syrian opposition, on Tuesday said the world had betrayed Syria's rebels. Crown Prince Salman Bin Abdul Aziz said the Syrian crisis was a catastrophe, and called for "changing the balance of forces" on the ground.
A central driver of the war, which has killed in excess of 150,000 people and displaced up to nine million, is a battle for influence between Saudia Arabia and Iran, which has staunchly backed the Assad regime throughout the crisis.
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