Syrian rebels killed 28 soldiers yesterday, a watchdog said, amid a report they beat and executed some of them, as fighting raged on in the country’s northwestern battlefields.
The troops were among at least 150 people killed nationwide – 40 civilians, 72 soldiers and 38 rebels, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
The clashes came as the main opposition Syrian National Council hit back at US warnings of rising Islamic extremism among rebels, saying the West and its partners were to blame for increasing radicalisation.
And China, amid stalled international peace efforts, said it had made “constructive new suggestions” to end the bloodshed during talks with UN-Arab League peace envoy Lakhdar Brahimi.
The 28 soldiers died during attacks on three army checkpoints in northwestern Idlib province, on the main road from Damascus to the embattled city of Aleppo, the Britain-based Observatory said.
Five rebels were also killed in the fighting near Saraqeb in the northwest, which has become a key battleground after rebels seized the town of Maaret al-Numan on the Damascus-Aleppo road early last month.
A video of yesterday’s attack posted on You Tube – the authenticity of which could not be verified – showed the rebels beating about 10 soldiers before lining them on the ground and executing them with automatic rifles.
A rebel is heard telling a prisoner: “Do you not know that we belong to the people of this country?” The soldier replies: “I swear in the name of God I did not fire.”
Yesterday also saw helicopter gunships strafing a district of Damascus as warplanes pounded rebel bastions in the capital’s suburbs and in Idlib, the Observatory said.
At least three warplane raids hit the northern Damascus suburb of Harasta, home to some of the rebel Free Syrian Army’s best organised fighters, as on the other side of the city gunships attacked the Al-Hajar al-Aswad district, it said.
President Bashar al-Assad’s forces launched a wave of intensive air strikes this week that analysts say are a response to opposition gains and aimed at “terrorising” local communities.
“They are trying to make the civilian population so angry and so scared that it will not be possible for the rebels to find safe havens,” said Riad Kahwaji, head of the Dubai-based Institute for Near East and Gulf Military Analysis.
Clashes also raged in the northern commercial hub of Aleppo, the Observatory said, and elsewhere in Idlib, where FSA forces backed by the Islamist Al-Nusra Front continued their siege of the Wadi Deif army base.