Syrian rebels have claimed a major blow against the Assad regime, driving its forces back and securing a town in the centre of the country, killing more than 20 soldiers and setting a number of tanks on fire.
A Syrian army soldier joins the rebels at Khaldiyeh neighborhood, in Homs province, central Syria Photo: AP Photo/Fadi Zaidan
By Richard Spencer, Middle East Correspondent
6:21PM BST 14 May 2012
Video posted online by the opposition showed rebel fighters parading in front of the burning tanks on the edge of the town of Rastan, between the two opposition stronghold cities of Homs and Hama. They held up large shell casings, evidence of the initial assault by the regime’s heavy weaponry which sparked the fightback.
The apparent victory, which the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said claimed the lives of 23 soldiers, will give new hope to the rebels, who seemed to have lost ground in the face of the regime’s overwhelming use of force.
But the clash, which followed overnight shelling of the town and the deaths of nine people inside including a Free Syrian Army commander, is another nail in the coffin of the Kofi Annan peace plan.
The opposition and their allies in the West and the Arab League are already looking for alternative ways to bring pressure on the regime. The Arab League are due to host talks with the fractured opposition parties in Cairo later this week, while European Union foreign ministers yesterday agreed to extend sanctions to more Syrian businesses and individuals with links to the regime.
Meanwhile, 12,000 American and allied troops, including special forces, are due to begin war games in Jordan, neighbouring Syria to the south, from Tuesday. The war games, which will include British Royal Marines, France, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and other NATO allies, are said to have been in the planning for three years and, according to the Pentagon, are not linked to the crisis over the border.
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But in the wake of the intervention by NATO and Arab forces in Libya last year, they are a further witness to the growing multi-pronged alliance between NATO and Sunni Arab states, in the face of what they see as the threat from Iran and allies like Syria.
There was no immediate confirmation from Syrian state media of the number of deaths in Rastan yesterday, but if the numbers are accurate they would represent one of the worst losses of life for the army in the conflict.
Mousab Alhamadee, a spokesman for the Local Co-ordinating Committees in Hama, said the regime had begun shelling and the Free Syrian Army had to defend the people. At one stage, shells were said to be landing at a rate of one a minute.
The videos showed men belonging to the “Lion of God Brigade” of the FSA boasting of having liberated the town completely. “We couldn’t stand in front of this daily attacks,” the narrator says. Another man says: “We are the FSA. We have promised the people and God to take revenge against the killers and we will continue our march until final liberation.”
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