Syrian forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad seized an air base in a village near the town of Qusair yesterday, in a major blow for rebels in their battle with government forces backed by Hizbollah fighters, state media said.
This is an unacceptable and extremely dangerous escalation
Assad’s troops and Hizbollah fighters already surround Qusair from three sides. Taking control of Dabaa village, to the north, would put the strategic town under siege from four sides and cut a main reinforcement line for the rebels.
“Our troops are now in full control of Dabaa air base,” Syrian state TV said, after five hours of fierce fighting in and around it.
Hizbollah’s Manar TV, which has a crew with the government forces, showed tanks being deployed inside the air base and soldiers walking around empty hangars, some making victory signs.
“We are standing in the airport. It is now safe and secured,” a Syrian officer who took part in the assault told Manar. He said some rebels escaped and were being chased by government troops. Some were detained and many had been killed.
Seizing the town of Qusair would secure territory that connects the capital Damascus to Assad’s stronghold on the Mediterranean coast, home to his minority Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shi’ite Islam that has largely supported him.
It also allows Assad to sever links between rebel-held areas in the north and south of Syria.
The US State Department called on Lebanon’s Hizbollah militia yesterday to withdraw its fighters from Syria immediately, saying their involvement on the side of President Bashar al-Assad signalled a dangerous broadening of the war.
State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki condemned the declaration last weekend by the leader of the Lebanese guerrilla movement, Hasran Nasrallah. He confirmed his combatants were in Syria and vowed they would stay in the war “to the end of the road.”
“This is an unacceptable and extremely dangerous escalation. We demand that Hizbollah withdraw its fighters from Syria immediately,” Psaki said at a daily news briefing.
Violence from the Syrian conflict, which began as a peaceful protest movement but descended into civil war, has increasingly spilled over into Lebanon, particularly in the northern city of Tripoli.
Hizbollah’s participation in a battle at the town of Qusair on the Syrian-Lebanese border risks dragging Lebanon into a conflict that has increasingly become overshadowed by Sunni-Shi’ite sectarian violence.
Nasrallah said Saturday that Syria and Lebanon were facing a threat from radical Sunni Islamists, which he argued was a plot devised by the US and its allies to serve Israel’s interests in the region. Hizbollah is a Shi’ite Muslim group.
Psaki also condemned the killing of three Lebanese soldiers at an army checkpoint in the eastern Bekaa Valley on Tuesday. The gunmen fled toward the Syrian border, but it was not clear who carried out the attack.
“We remain deeply concerned about reports of multiple cross-border security incidents in recent days,” she said. Asked what the US would do if Hizbollah did not withdraw, Psaki said Washington was pursuing diplomatic solutions but was also “continuing to increase and escalate our aid and support for the (Syrian) opposition.”
She said Undersecretary of State Wendy Sherman and Acting Assistant Secretary for Near Eastern Affairs, Beth Jones, would travel to Geneva in the coming week to meet Russian and UN diplomats and work on bringing together an international conference on Syria.
President Barack Obama has repeatedly shied from US involvement in the conflict, which has claimed 80,000 lives, although he has kept all options on the table.