Fierce fighting raged in Latakia

Fierce fighting raged in Latakia province on Syria's coastline on Sunday, as the army pushed an advance and killed a local leader, a monitoring group has said.
The regime deployed massive reinforcements to fight rebels in Latakia, which has strategic and symbolic significance because it Syrians that belong to President Bashar al-Assad's Alawite sect are majority there.

Assad sends air force to prevent rebel advances in home province

By Oliver Holmes

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Warplanes bombed a village in Syria's north overnight in an apparent effort by President Bashar al-Assad to prevent rebels fighting him from advancing on communities in the stronghold region of his Alawite sect.

Assad's forces are on the defensive in his family's home province of Latakia and recent rebel gains across northern Syria, including a military air base captured last week in Aleppo province, have further loosened his grip on the country.
Assad controls much of southern and central Syria, while insurgents hold northern areas near the Turkish border and along the Euphrates valley towards Iraq. The northeast corner of the pivotal Arab state is now an increasingly autonomous Kurdish region. (link.reuters.com/puw22v)

The mainly Sunni Muslim insurgents are battling to overthrow Assad, whose minority Alawite sect is an offshoot of Shi'ite Islam, in a civil war which erupted two years ago when mainly peaceful protests against his rule were put down with force.
As many as 20 people were killed in the air strikes on the village of Salma, including 10 civilians, six Syrian fighters and four foreign fighters, the anti-Assad Syrian Observatory for Human Rights group said on Saturday.
Salma is a Sunni village in the Jabal Akrad mountain range which overlooks the Mediterranean. Rebel forces comprised of mainly Islamist brigades, including two al Qaeda-linked groups and based in Salma, have killed hundreds in offensives this month and have seized several Alawite settlements.
Amateur video footage posted on the Internet showed a large apartment block with all its outside walls blown out. Men, some in military fatigues, were seen loading bodies onto a pickup truck.
ALAWITE REGIONAL STRONGHOLD AT STAKE
Assad has deployed extra forces in the region and the air raids reflected an urgent priority to protect the main region of his Alawite sect - 12 percent of Syria's 21 million people.
The president's forces have also been pushing to retake lost ground in neighboring Aleppo province, where insurgents have made significant headway over the past few weeks.
After the rebel capture last month of Khan al-Assal, a town southwest of Aleppo city, activists said on Saturday soldiers killed 12 civilians, including a woman, in a nearby town.
The government accuses rebels of executing 123 people in Khan al-Assal and activists say the killing in Tabara al-Sakhani, 12 miles to the south, could have been retaliatory.
Rebel-controlled districts of Aleppo city, once Syria's commercial hub but now partly reduced to rubble by the conflict, were also bombarded by army artillery, the Observatory said.
More than 100,000 people have been killed in the 28-month conflict and 1.7 million Syrians have been forced to flee to neighboring countries, the United Nations says.
Assad, whose family has ruled Syria for more than four decades, has relied on Alawite-led army units and security forces from the start, but has turned increasingly to loyalist militia armed and funded by Damascus to fight the rebels.
He has also enjoyed staunch support from Middle East Shi'ite powerhouse Iran, neighboring Lebanon's Shi'ite Hezbollah movement and the Assads' longtime arms supplier Russia.
His fragmented foes have received little military aid from Western powers that want Assad removed but are wary of the growing presence of radical Islamists in the rebel ranks.
(Editing by Mark Heinrich)

Syria rebels strike Assad's Alawite stronghold, seize airport

 http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/06/us-syria-crisis-idUSBRE9750N520130806

By Khaled Yacoub Oweis and Mariam Karouny

AMMAN/BEIRUT

(Reuters) - Syrian Islamist rebels have killed around 200 people in a three-day offensive in the mountain stronghold of President Bashar al-Assad's Alawite sect and driven hundreds of villagers to seek refuge on the Mediterranean coast, activists said on Tuesday.
Since launching the surprise assault at dawn on Sunday, the mainly Islamist rebel brigades led by two al Qaeda-linked groups have captured half a dozen villages on the northern edges of the Alawite mountain range, the activists say.
The rebel strike into Alawite territory and their capture of a military airport north of Aleppo mark two major gains for Assad's foes after months of setbacks during which they lost ground around the capital Damascus and the central city of Homs.
Combined with a steady fightback in the southern province of Deraa, they highlight the challenge Assad faces in trying to restore his authority across Syria after two years of conflict that has killed 100,000 people and fragmented the country.
Assad controls much of southern and central Syria, while rebels hold northern areas near the Turkish border and along the Euphrates valley towards Iraq. The northeast corner is now an increasingly autonomous Kurdish region. (link.reuters.com/puw22v)
Rebels complain they are outgunned and lack foreign support, unlike the Iran- and Hezbollah-backed Syrian army. But they have support from regional Sunni powers and have equipped themselves with anti-tank weapons seized from the army.
Syrian state television said on Tuesday at least two Alawite villages seized by rebels since Sunday had been recaptured and named 10 "terrorists" - as the authorities call the rebel fighters in Syria - it said were killed in the fighting.
Overall, 60 rebels have been killed since the start of the operation, said Ammar Hassan, a local activist in Latakia. "Assad is sending huge reinforcement from Latakia, but liberation will continue," he said.
Assad's deployment of extra forces reflects the gravity of the challenge to his authority in a region that had remained firmly under his authority since the outbreak of Syria's conflict, which started with peaceful protests in March 2011.
The conflict has turned into a civil war, deepening the Shi'ite-Sunni schism in Islam and raising tensions between Iran and the rest of the mainly Sunni Middle East.
Diplomats say the coastal area and its mountain villages could be the scene of an Alawite bloodbath if Islamist hardliners eventually gain the upper hand in the conflict.
"We killed 200 (of Assad's men) on Sunday alone, and yesterday at least 40," said a rebel fighter in the area.
"His people were kicked out to the city," he said referring to the Mediterranean port of Latakia. "Only those who raised the white flag were exempt from killing."
Ahmad Abdelqader, an activist with the Ahrar al-Jabal Brigade, one of the groups involved in the operation, put the death toll at 175, describing them as soldiers and militiamen who were manning roadblocks linking the mountain villages.
A prominent Alawite cleric, Muwaffaq Ghazal, was also seized by rebels from the al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front, who were seeking an exchange for captured fighters, activists said.
Mohammad Moussa, a Free Syrian Army commander, said rebel forces were on the outskirts of the hilltop village of Aramo, which is 20 km (12 miles) from Qardaha - Assad's hometown and burial place of his father, Hafez al-Assad, who ruled Syria with an iron fist for three decades.
"The objective is to reach Qardaha and hurt them like they are hurting us. The Alawites have been huddling in their mountain thinking that they can destroy Syria and remain immune," Abdelqader said.
"TURNING POINT" IN NORTH
In another gain for the rebels, Islamist fighters in the north of the country took control of Minnig military airport after months of conflict, consolidating rebel control over a key supply route from Turkey into Aleppo.
The opposition Syrian National Coalition announced the "full liberation of the airport", saying its capture "will have a strategic effect on the course of battle throughout the north".
A statement issued by nine brigades that took part in the operation, including the al Qaeda-linked Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), said: "The airport has been fully liberated. The remnants of the Assad gangs are now being chased."
The command headquarters, the last section still held by Assad's troops, was overrun on Monday by ISIL rebels after a suicide bomber drove an armoured personnel carrier packed with explosives into the building.
Charles Lister of Jane's Terrorism and Insurgency Centre said the fall of the airport "underlines the leading strategic impact being played by militant Islamists, particularly in northern Syria".
He said it will also likely prove a turning point within the wider conflict in Aleppo province. Assad's forces still control part of Aleppo city, the country's former commercial hub, but most of the rural land around it is rebel-held.
Activists said Minnig had not been used as an airport for several months as rebel fighters gradually took it over, capturing 15 soldiers during the final push on the facility in the last two days.
Syrian state media said fighting continued in the area. "Our armed forces heroes in the Minnig Airport and the surrounding area are confronting the terrorist with unmatched valour. The terrorist groups are taking heavy losses," a statement said.
Activists said the fall of Minnig Airport now exposed two nearby Shi'ite villages, where Hezbollah fighters have been training loyalist militia.
Assad's forces tried to prevent the fall of the airport by launching an armoured offensive from Aleppo last month, backed by guerrillas based in the two Shi'ite villages, al-Nubbul and Zahra.
(Editing by Dominic Evans and Will Waterman)

Syrian rebels push into Assad's Alawite mountain stronghold

By Khaled Yacoub Oweis

AMMAN (Reuters) - Syrian rebel fighters armed with anti-tank missiles pushed toward President Bashar al-Assad's hometown of Qardaha on Monday, the second day of a surprise offensive in the heartland of his minority Alawite sect, opposition activists said.

Forces comprising 10 mainly Islamist brigades, including two al Qaeda-linked groups, advanced south to the outskirts of the Alawite village of Aramo, 20 km (12 miles) from Qardaha, taking advantage of rugged terrain, the activists said.
On Sunday rebel fighters captured half a dozen villages on the northern tip of the Alawite Mountain, located east of the port city of Latakia. The area is the main recruiting ground for Assad's core praetorian guard units comprising the Republican Guards, Fourth Division and special forces.
Those pro-Assad fighters are mostly centered in Damascus where they are spearheading operations against mainly Sunni rebels battling against four decades of rule by Assad and his late father.
"Dozens of the regime's forces have been killed in the last two days. The objective is to liberate our people in Latakia, and that would entail passing through Qardaha," said Salim Omar, an activist from the Sham News Network opposition monitoring organization.
"This is a war from hilltop to hilltop. The region is rugged and tanks are not much use for the regime," Omar said from an undisclosed location on the coast.
He said the rebel units, which include the Nusra Front and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, two groups linked to al Qaeda, destroyed three tanks positioned at an army mountain position overlooking the town of Salma, a Sunni village on the edge of the Alawite Mountain.
"The rebels are attacking with the anti-tank missiles, which is giving them a devastating edge in this terrain. The shabbiha (pro-Assad militia) have taken a hit to their morale. They thought tanks could protect them," Omar said.
The Syrian Network for Human Rights opposition monitoring group said nine rebel fighters were killed in the mountain battles on Monday. The anti-Assad Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 12 rebels and 19 pro-Assad fighters - including soldiers and members of his militia known as the National Defence Army - were killed in Sunday's fighting.
Video footage taken by activists showed rebels firing Russian-made Konkurs anti-tank missiles from a rocky terrain, and praying next to a tank after taking the army position overlooking Salma. Other footage showed fighters from Ansar al-Sham brigade firing a Grad surface-to-surface missile at a mountaintop.
The footage could not be independently verified. Syrian state media have not commented on the battles.
DIPLOMATS FEAR BLOODBATH
Ahmad Abdelqader, an activist attached to the Ahrar al-Jabal Brigade, one of the groups involved in the operation, said hundreds of Alawite villagers have fled the region toward Latakia.
"The objective is to reach Qardaha and hurt them like they are hurting us. The Alawites have been huddling in their mountain thinking that they can destroy Syria and remain immune," he said.
Qardaha contains the mausoleum of Assad's father, Hafez al-Assad, but is home to several Alawite clans who have not seen eye to eye with the younger Assad over his handling of the uprising.
Last year, the arrest of veteran human rights campaigner Abdelaziz al-Khayyer, a former political prisoner and a member of a prominent family in Qardaha, sparked disturbances in the town, Alawite activists said.
"The rebels are not far from Qardaha, and the threat to Qardaha has moved from being conceivable to being a real one," said Sheikh Anas Ayrount, a member of the Syrian National Coalition who is from the coastal city of Banias.
Assad's Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shi'ite Islam, has controlled Syria since its members took over main units of the army and the security apparatus in the 1960s.
The sect has traditionally lived in the ancestral Alawite Mountains, but members of the community moved in large numbers in the last three decades to cities on the coast and in the interior, lured by preferential jobs in the government, army and security apparatus.
More than 100,000 people have been killed since the uprising against Assad family rule erupted in 2011, beginning with peaceful demonstrations that were crushed by soldiers using live ammunition and tanks, sparking an armed insurgency.
Hardline Islamists now dominate the Sunni Muslim brigades that have fueled the uprising.
Although thousands of pro-Assad forces have been killed in fighting, most of the civilian victims have been Sunni, sparking increased calls in the community to target Alawite regions.
Assad, with support from Shi'ite-dominated Iran and Lebanese Hezbollah guerrillas, has gained ground, mainly in the center of the country in recent months. In recent weeks rebel brigades have hit back in the northern province of Aleppo and the southern province of Deraa, the cradle of the revolt.
A source in Latakia, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Sunday's fighting started at dawn and that the rebels, based in the town of Salma, attacked 10 Alawite villages.
Sirens from ambulances, punctuated by the sound of bombardment and government air raids on Salma, could be heard throughout the day, the source said.
A senior opposition figure, who declined to be named, said the United States, a main backer of the Free Syrian Army, is against targeting Latakia, because it could spark revenge attacks by Alawites against its majority Sunni population and add to an already huge refugee problem.
Diplomats say the coastal area and its mountain villages could be the scene of a bloodbath against the region's Alawite population if Islamist hardliners end up eventually gaining the upper hand in the conflict.
(Reporting by Khaled Yacoub Oweis; Editing by Paul Simao)

Syrian rebels take villages in regime's heartland

By BARBARA SURK
Associated Press

BEIRUT (AP) -- Syrian rebels captured four Alawite villages on the country's mountainous Mediterranean coast on Monday as they battled government troops in one of President Bashar Assad's strongholds for the second straight day, activists said.

Alawites, an offshoot of Shiite Islam, dominate Assad's regime. The capture of villages in their heartland in Latakia province is a symbolic blow to Assad, whose forces have otherwise been taking territory in recent weeks in central Syria.

Syria's conflict has taken on an increasingly sectarian tone in the last year, pitting predominantly Sunni Muslim rebels against the Alawite-dominated regime.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said rebels captured the villages after attacking government outposts in the Jabal al-Akrad hills on Sunday. The group, which relies on reports from activists, said at least 32 government troops and militiamen and at least 19 rebels, including foreign fighters, died in Sunday's fighting.

Much of Latakia has been under the firm control of Assad's forces since the beginning of the conflict more than two years ago, but some areas including the Jabal al-Akrad are close to rebel-held areas and have seen fighting.

It was a rare success for the rebels on the battlefield in recent weeks. Assad's forces have been on the offensive since taking the central town of Qusair in June, and last week captured a key district in the central city of Homs, an opposition stronghold.

Syria main's opposition bloc hailed the rebel advance, and said that Assad's troops had used the villages to attack rebel-held civilian areas.

The Observatory's chief Rami Abdul-Rahman said civilians in the four villages fled. There were no immediate reports of civilian casualties in the fighting.

Meanwhile, at the site of one of the regime's victories in Homs, Syrian Defense Minister Gen. Fahd Jassem al-Freij toured the ravaged district of Khaldiyeh Monday, praising troops for what he told state TV was a "military miracle."

Standing in front of the historic Khalid bin al-Waleed mosque in Khaldiyeh, al-Freij vowed the army will "triumph against this universally-backed terrorism which is being exported to us."

More than 100,000 people have been killed since the conflict started in March 2011 as largely peaceful protests against Assad's rule. It turned into an armed uprising after opposition supporters took up arms to fight a brutal government crackdown on dissent.

The Assad government claims it is not facing a popular revolt, but a conspiracy by Gulf Arab states and the West seeking to destroy Syria by supplying Islamic extremists with weapons and funds.

Also Monday, Human Rights Watch said ballistic missiles fired by the Syrian army into populated areas have killed hundreds of civilians in recent months.

The U.S.-based group said it has investigated nine apparent missile attacks that killed at least 215 people, half of them children, between February and July. The most recent attack HRW investigated occurred in the northern province of Aleppo on July 26, killing at least 33 civilians including 17 children.

HRW activists visited the sites of seven of the nine attacks and found no apparent military targets nearby, the group said. Ole Solvang, a senior researcher with HRW, said it's impossible to distinguish between civilians and fighters when firing missiles with wide-ranging destructive effects into densely populated areas.

"Even if there are fighters in the area, you cannot accurately target them and the impact in some of these cases has been devastating to local civilians," Solvang said in a statement.

The HRW called on Assad to stop indiscriminate attacks.

Government officials could not immediately be reached for comment. The military has repeatedly denied it is targeting civilians during the 2-year conflict, saying its troops are fighting "terrorists" hiding in civilian areas.

In his latest appearance late Sunday Assad called on the Syrians to unite behind the army's efforts to "defend their homeland"

"There is no solution with terrorism but to strike with an iron fist," Assad was quoted as saying by state news agency SANA. "With this kind of battles that aim at the destruction of the cultural identity and the Syrian national fabric, we either win together as Syrians or lose together."

Assad spoke while taking part in an iftar, the meal that breaks the dawn-to-dusk fast during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

Rebels fighting regime force in latakia has been advance.

Rebels fighting troops loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad clashed with the army Monday as they advanced into the coastal province of Latakia, a monitoring group said.
The clashes in the western province come a day after rebels seized five majority Alawite villages in the area, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
By Monday, however, the army had retaken one village, Beit al-Shakuhi, the group said.
"At least 20 rebels have been killed, as have 32 army and pro-regime militia troops over the past two days," Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP news agency.
The fighting is concentrated near the mountainous Jabal al-Akrad area in northern Latakia, and rebels are also trying to advance in Jabal Turkman.
These areas are home to a mixed population of Sunnis and Alawites, "making it practically impossible to avoid the conflict there from turning sectarian", Abdel Rahman warned.
[AFP]
 

Syrian rebels open new frontline in Latakia

Opposition fighters launch major offensive on port city crucial to battle against President Assad.

Syrian rebels have launched a major offensive on the government stronghold of Latakia.
The port city is crucial to the rebel's bid to topple President Bashar al-Assad.
More than 100 people have reportedly been killed in the latest clashes, including government soldiers.
Al Jazeera's Imran Khan reports.

Rebels have launched a major offensive on the government stronghold of Latakia.

Syrian rebels have launched a major offensive on the government stronghold of Latakia.
The port city is crucial to the rebel's bid to topple President Bashar Assad.
More than 100 people have been killed in the latest clashes, including 19 government soldiers.
Al Jazeera's Imran Khan reports.