The Syrian army entered eastern districts of the town of Yabroud, the last rebel bastion near the Lebanese border north of Damascus, yesterday and tightened its grip on the remaining rebels there from the al-Qaeda-linked Nusra Front.
Soldiers advanced inside Yabroud and “eliminated terrorist strongholds”, said a reporter on Syrian state television SANA who was broadcasting live from the town’s outskirts.
He said the army had taken control of hills and mountaintops southeast of Yabroud, gaining a strategically advantageous position. A military source confirmed to Reuters that the army had taken a series of peaks and said it had “fastened pincers around Yabroud.”
Capturing the town would help President Bashar al-Assad cut off a cross-border rebel supply line from Lebanon. It is near the highway linking Damascus to the former commercial hub of Aleppo in the north and to the Mediterranean coast in the west, where Assad’s minority Alawite community is concentrated.
The government has been making incremental gains along the highway as well as around Damascus and Aleppo in recent months, regaining the initiative in a conflict which enters its fourth year this month. Thousands of people fled Yabroud, a town of about 40,000 to 50,000 people roughly 60 km north of Damascus, and the surrounding areas after it was bombed and shelled last month ahead of the government offensive.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said the government pounded some districts of Yabroud with barrel bombs yesterday.
The SANA reporter said the army had imposed a cordon around the western part of the town before entering from the east. “With the entrance of the Syrian army forces from the east and the west, the noose was tightened around the (armed) groups.” Some of the rebels had withdrawn to Rankos, a village 30 km southwest of Yabroud.
But others, mainly from the Nusra Front, had stayed in Yabroud and were fighting the advancing government forces. The reporter said the Nusra militants had blocked roads to prevent other rebels from retreating.
“Most of them are non-Syrian nationals and therefore are still insistent on remaining in Yabroud even though the Syrian army is dealing strong, severe strikes.”
Footage broadcast by Al Mayadeen television from the outskirts of Yabroud and some of its eastern districts showed soldiers charging through a field towards an arched gate and a sign saying ‘Welcome to Yabroud’.