Syrian army seizes town near capital

Syrian army seizes town near capital

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12:27 AM

25

April

2013

An image grab taken from a video uploaded on YouTube yesterday shows the rubble of the minaret (background) of Aleppo’s ancient Umayyad mosque.

 

Reuters/Beirut

Syrian forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad seized a strategic town east of Damascus yesterday, breaking a critical weapons supply route for the rebels, activists and fighters said.

Rebels have held several suburbs ringing the southern and eastern parts Damascus for months, but they have been struggling to maintain their positions against a ground offensive backed by fierce army shelling and air strikes in recent weeks.

“The disaster has struck, the army entered Otaiba. The regime has managed to turn off the weapons tap,” a fighter from the town told Reuters via Skype.

“The price of a bullet will go from 50 Syrian pounds to 1,000 Syrian pounds ($10) now, but we must pay and retake it. It’s the main if not the only route.”

Rebels said they pulled out of Otaiba, a gateway to the eastern rural suburbs of Damascus known as Al Ghouta, in the early hours after more than 37 days of fighting in which they accused the government of using chemical weapons against them twice.

The government has denied using chemical weapons and accused rebels in turn of firing them in Aleppo.

Rebels used Otaiba for eight months as their main supply route to Damascus for weapons brought in from the Jordanian border.

Government forces pushed in with tanks and soldiers.

“Now all the villages will start falling one after another, the battle in Eastern Ghouta will be a war of attrition,” another fighter in the area said, speaking by Skype.

More than two years into their struggle to end four decades of Assad family rule, the rebels remain divided by struggles over ideology and fighting for power

Rebels fighting in Otaiba said they sent a distress call to brigades in other parts of Ghouta but it went unanswered by other units with whom they compete for influence and weapons.

“To all mujahedeen (holy warriors): If Otaiba falls, the whole of Eastern Ghouta will fall ... come and help,” part of the message sent to fighters said.

The army appears to have been advancing on fronts across Syria in recent weeks, even in northern provinces where rebels seized large swathes of territory.

Most critically, it has made gains around Damascus and the Lebanese-Syrian border - critical to linking the capital to coastal provinces that are Assad’s stronghold.

The coast is an enclave of Assad’s minority Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shia Islam. Alawites have dominated Syria’s power structures during four decades of Assad family rule.

Rebels, mostly from the Sunni Muslim majority, have seized territory in northern and southern Syria, and hold about half of Aleppo, the country’s biggest city. But Assad’s forces have kept control of the capital Damascus and most major cities.

Elsewhere in Damascus, two mortar bombs hit the government-held suburb of Jaramana, killing seven and wounding more than 25, activists and state media said. State news agency Sana blamed the attack on “terrorists”, the term it commonly uses to describe Assad’s armed opponents.

Some rebel units condemned the attack on Jaramana.

“Our brigade loudly condemns these criminal acts, which have nothing to do with Islam in any way,” the Saad bin Abada al-Khudraji brigade said.

Islamist rebel units said yesterday they had launched an offensive on the coastal province of Latakia, a move which could further stoke sectarian tensions in a war that has increasingly divided the country along religious and ethnic lines.

Islamist fighters said they had fired two rockets that hit the town of Qurdaha, the birthplace and burial site of Assad’s father, Hafez al-Assad, who ruled Syria for 30 years. Residents in Latakia province who spoke to Reuters by Skype said the rockets hit outside Qurdaha, in a rural area called Slunfeh.

It is impossible to verify the account due to government restrictions on media access in Syria.

 

Minaret of ancient mosque destroyed in Aleppo battle

AFP/Damascus

The minaret of Aleppo’s ancient Umayyad mosque was destroyed yesterday, Syrian state media and a watchdog reported, with the regime and the opposition blaming each other.

An archaeological treasure in Aleppo’s Unesco-listed Old City, the mosque has been the centre of fighting for months and had already suffered extensive damage.

With insurgents and the regime caught in a stalemate in the key northern city, the ancient mosque has fallen in and out of rebel hands several times.

The Umayyad mosque was originally built in the 8th century but was apparently destroyed and then rebuilt in the 13th century.

It has recently fallen back into rebel hands, but has been left pockmarked by bullets and stained with soot.

Antique furnishings and intricately sculpted colonnades have been charred, valuable Islamic relics ransacked and ancient artefacts looted.

Rebels say they have managed to salvage ancient handwritten Qur’anic manuscripts and have hidden them.

Yesterday, as reports broke of the minaret’s destruction, activists uploaded video shot at the scene, but there was no video immediately available showing the moment of the blast that caused the collapse.

As with multiple other attacks in Syria’s spiralling conflict, which the UN says has left more than 70,000 people dead, the regime and the opposition blamed each other for the damage.

State media said jihadist Al Nusra Front fighters blew up the minaret, and accused the group classed by the US as a “terrorist” organisation of seeking to blame loyalist forces.

But rebels, the opposition and activists all said the army was responsible.

“Tanks began firing in the direction of the minaret until it was destroyed,” one rebel said in a video posted on YouTube, insisting rebel snipers were not stationed inside the minaret.

“We were afraid that it would be targeted,” he said.

“The Assad regime has done everything it can to destroy Syria’s social fabric. Today, by killing people and destroying culture, it is sowing a bitterness in people’s hearts that will be difficult to erase for a very long time,” the video added.

Meanwhile, an activist who identified himself as Zain al-Rifai said he saw an army tank “fire several shells directly at the Umayyad mosque, including at the minaret”.

He also claimed the force of the explosion was magnified because of landmines planted by the army in the mosque complex before the rebel takeover.

The main opposition National Coalition, recognised by dozens of states and organisations as the legitimate representative of the Syrian people, mourned the ancient minaret’s destruction.

“The deliberate destruction of this minaret, under whose shadow Saladin... and (10th century Iraqi poet) Al-Mutanabbi rested, is a crime against human civilisation,” said the Coalition.

 

http://www.gulf-times.com/Mobile/Region/216/details/350355/Syrian-army-seizes-town-near-capital