FRI 29 - 3 - 2024
 
Date: Sep 8, 2014
Source: The Daily Star
Syria rebels advance near Golan Heights
BEIRUT: Syrian rebels have made fresh advances near the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights in Qunaitra province, taking control of a strategic hill overlooking the border, an activist group said Sunday.
 
Fighting has raged in the province since August, when rebels and the Al-Qaeda-affiliated Nusra Front took control of a border post.
 
“Rebels have since taken control of hills overlooking the border post, as well as several villages nearby, [after battles that killed] a large number of troops on both sides,” Syrian Observatory for Human Rights director Rami Abdel-Rahman said. 

On Saturday, “the regime tried to take back the village of Msahra, but failed,” said Abdel-Rahman, with the fighting leaving the 26 government troops and 17 rebels dead.
 
Over the course of Saturday’s fighting, the rebels also seized a string of new hilltops.
 
The Observatory says the fighting around Qunaitra has killed some 70 loyalists and dozens of rebels since the end of August.
 
Elsewhere, regime warplanes carried out strikes against areas under ISIS control in the eastern province of Deir al-Zor and the northern province of Raqqa Sunday.
 
The airstrike on Raqqa killed two children, the Observatory said, while the raids on two areas in Deir al-Zor killed at least 12 civilians, among them seven members of a tribe that had fought ISIS.
 
The strikes come amid a stepped-up campaign by Assad’s regime targeting ISIS positions in northern and eastern Syria.
 
Government airstrikes killed 53 people in Raqqa Saturday, mostly civilians. “We have documented the deaths of 31 civilians, among them five women and three children, in Raqqa and its surroundings,” Abdel-Rahman said. Another 15 jihadists were confirmed dead, as well as seven other unidentified people. 

Twenty-four of the dead were killed when a bakery on a busy street was hit. The airstrikes smashed parts of buildings, set cars alight and crushed people under rubble.
 
Abu Ibrahim, an activist from the media collective called “Raqqa is being silently slaughtered,” said the local morgue was packed with charred bodies, making identification difficult. He and the Observatory said at least eight members of one family were killed.
 
Other strikes hit a government finance building that ISIS used as its headquarters and another building used as a jail, Abu Ibrahim said.
 
In a headline bar, Syrian state TV said army units had destroyed weapons and ammunition stores used by ISIS fighters in Raqqa, “eliminating a number of them and wounding others in a number of areas.” It gave no further details.
 
The Britain-based Observatory, meanwhile, reported Sunday that several shells launched from rebel positions onto Abbasiyyin Square and other areas of central Damascus.
 
The shelling comes three weeks into a major battle in the eastern Damascus district of Jobar, which the regime is trying to wrest from rebel control.The air force carried out 10 airstrikes against rebel positions east of Damascus, the Observatory said, reporting no casualties.



 
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