FRI 29 - 3 - 2024
 
Date: Jun 10, 2015
Source: The Daily Star
Syria rebels overrun army base in new regime setback
BEIRUT: An alliance of Syrian rebel forces seized a key army base in the south of the country Tuesday in a new setback for the regime’s embattled troops.

The Southern Front alliance, affiliated with the rebel Free Syrian Army, took full control of the 52nd Brigade base in Deraa province after 24 hours of fierce clashes, a spokesman told AFP.

“The 52nd Brigade base was fully liberated from the regime army,” Major Essam al-Rayyes said, adding at least 2,000 rebel fighters had taken part in the “short and quick” assault.

The base lies near a major highway running from Damascus to Syria’s southern border with Jordan and is also near the frontier with neighboring Swaida province, which is largely regime-controlled.

“This base was one of the main lines of defense for the regime forces. It was a nightmare, because they used it to shell all the areas to the east of the province,” Rayyes said.

The Southern Front was combing through the site for material left by regime troops, Rayyes said, adding the alliance would likely launch additional attacks from there in the near future.

Saber Safar, commander of the “First Army” rebel group that said it led the attack, told Reuters by Skype that government forces had completed a “mass flight” after starting to withdraw in recent days.

The rebels had fired more than 100 missiles at the base during the attack, the opposition-affiliated Orient News TV station said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights confirmed opposition groups had taken the base after clashes and intense shelling that killed 15 rebel fighters and 20 government forces.

Rayyes, however, said more than 67 soldiers were killed in the battle for Brigade 52, including seven officers. Eleven rebel fighters were also killed. The numbers could not be independently confirmed.

Observatory chief Rami Abdel-Rahman said rebel forces also seized two villages, including the Christian town of Rakham, as regime troops withdrew to the nearby village of Dara.

Syria’s official news agency SANA did not report the capture of the base. But earlier, citing a military source, it said the air force had struck the area, killing at least 40 “terrorists,” who it accused Jordan of backing.

A pro-regime Internet news outlet said that several dozen regime troops had arrived at the government hospital in Swaida after the battle, while other pro-regime outlets acknowledged the capture.

Pro-opposition media outlets and the rebel groups quickly circulated video footage of residents welcoming the fighters after the battle ended.

The fall of the base is the latest in a string of defeats for the regime, which has lost territory to both rebel alliances in Syria’s northwest and ISIS in the country’s center. It also follows defeats in Deraa, including in April the Nassib border post, its last crossing with Jordan.

Nonetheless, efforts toward a political solution to the crisis have faltered.

In Cairo, figures from the country’s exiled opposition, as well as “tolerated” anti-regime figures from within Syria, agreed on a road map that ruled out any future role for President Bashar Assad.

The road map, distributed to journalists after a two-day meeting, also stressed the need for a negotiated solution under U.N. auspices starting with a cease-fire, prisoner release and the return of opposition figures from abroad.

The civil war has now killed more than 230,000 people, the Observatory said as it issued a new toll Tuesday.

The Britain-based group said nearly 70,000 civilians have died in the war, nearly 11,500 of them children.

More than 85,500 government forces – soldiers and militiamen – have been killed, along with over 41,000 rebels, Syrian jihadis and Kurdish fighters.

The monitor also documented the deaths of 31,247 foreign jihadis, and said another 3,191 people killed in the conflict have yet to be identified.

Abdel-Rahman said the real death toll could be above 300,000, since there are tens of thousands of people who are missing or were buried without being counted.



 
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