Rebel fighters captured a major base from the Syrian army in the south of the country yesterday, rebels and a monitoring group said, a setback for President Bashar al-Assad reflecting the mounting pressure on him after recent losses elsewhere.
Syrian officials could not immediately be reached for comment. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based group that monitors the war, said a nearby town and a village had fallen to the rebels in addition to the base, Liwa 52.
“We announce the liberation of Liwa 52,” Issam al-Rayyes, spokesman for the “Southern Front” alliance of rebel groups, told Reuters. Liwa 52, or the 52nd Brigade, is one of the biggest Syrian army bases in the area.
The southern region near the border with Jordan and Israel is one of the areas where insurgents have inflicted significant defeats on Assad in the last three months, notably by capturing the Nasib border crossing with Jordan on April 1.
Less than 100 kilometres south of Damascus, the area is one of the last major footholds of rebel groups that are not dominated by hardline jihadists such as Islamic State and the Nusra Front, al-Qaeda’s Syrian arm, although Nusra also has a presence there.
An earlier Syrian state TV reported that the army had repelled an attempt by “a terrorist group” to infiltrate a military position in the area. It said a number of the attackers had been killed and wounded, including a rebel commander. The air force was carrying out raids in the area, it added.
The “Southern Front”, an alliance of rebel groups, has been coordinating operations against al-Assad from a joint command centre in Jordan.
It includes groups that have received some support from foreign states that want to see al-Assad gone, including Gulf Arab governments.
Washington, which has been leading an air campaign against Islamic State since last year, says its strategy depends on encouraging the success of groups that oppose both al-Assad’s government and the jihadists.
Saber Safar, commander of the “First Army” rebel group that said it led the attack, told Reuters by Skype that government forces had completed a “mass flight” after starting to withdraw in recent days.
The rebels had fired more than 100 missiles at the base during the attack, the opposition-affiliated Orient News TV station said.
Since late March, an alliance of insurgents including the Nusra Front have seized nearly all of the northwestern province of Idlib at the Turkish border. Islamic State has also seized the city of Palmyra from government control.