Syrian forces backed by Hizbollah militants took full control of the town of Yabroud yesterday after driving out rebels, helping President Bashar al-Assad secure the land route connecting the capital Damascus with Aleppo and the Mediterranean coast.

The fall of Yabroud, the last rebel bastion near the Lebanese border, could sever a vital insurgent supply line from Lebanon and consolidate government control over a swathe of territory from Damascus to the central city of Homs.

The army “restored security and stability to Yabroud...after eliminating a large number of terrorist mercenaries”, the Syrian military said in a statement hailing the strategic victory.

A military source said that about 1,400 rebels from the Free Syrian Army, Ahrar al-Sham and other factions had fled Yabroud in the past two days. Another 1,000 militants from the al-Qaeda-linked Nusra Front had held out on Saturday to fight government forces which had entered eastern districts of Yabroud and captured several hilltops.

Yabroud gives Assad government control from Damascus to Homs

“They fought a fierce battle and then from last night until the early hours of today they all pulled out,” he said.

The source said the militants had withdrawn to the nearby villages of Hosh Arab, Fleita and Rankos as well as Arsal, a Lebanese border town 20 kilo­metres to the northwest.

Hizbollah-operated Al Manar television broadcast scenes from Yabroud’s main square where people walked around and talked in apparent safety. Soldiers replaced the three-star flag of the Syrian revolution with the government’s two-star banner.

Footage from earlier in the day showed empty streets, shuttered shops and abandoned homes in a main thoroughfare. Heavy gunfire could be heard in the background.

The anti-Assad Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said fighters from the Lebanese Shi’ite Muslim militant group Hizbollah, who supported the Syrian army and pro-government fighters in sealing off the frontier area with Lebanon, were now in charge of large parts of Yabroud.

“The Nusra Front had a lot of influence in the region, but their influence has now ended,” Rami Abdelrahman, head of the Observatory, told Reuters. He said it was unclear where the more than 2,000 foreign fighters in the area had ended up.

The army was dismantling a large number of explosive devices planted by the rebels in Yabroud, Syrian state TV said.

Thousands of civilians fled Yabroud, a town of about 40,000 to 50,000 people roughly 60 kilometres north of Damascus, and the surrounding areas after it was bombed and shelled last month ahead of the government offensive.

The government has been making incremental gains along the land route and around Damascus and Aleppo in the past months, regaining the initiative in the three-year uprising-turned-civil war which has killed more than 140,000 people.

Syria’s Mediterranean coastal region is strategically vital for Assad because it is the heartland of his minority Alawite community, which is an offshoot of Shi’ite Islam.

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