Syrian army bombs key rebel town; three killed
Syrian government forces bombed a strategic rebel town
in the country’s north for the third straight day on Saturday, pounding
it with airstrikes that killed at least three people, activists said.
President
Bashar Assad’s troops have in recent weeks seized the momentum in the
civil war, now in its third year, and have been on offensive against
rebels on several fronts, including in the northern Idlib province along
the border with Turkey.
In Idlib, government forces
this week besieged the town of Saraqeb, hitting it with rockets, tanks
and air raids, said the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human
Rights.
On Saturday, the group said military aircraft
dropped at least 15 makeshift bombs, known as barrel bombs, on the
town. The bombs are made of hundreds of pounds (kilograms) of explosives
stuffed into barrels.
Meanwhile, an airstrike by a
fighter jet killed at least three people, including two children, said
the Observatory, which relies on reports from a network of activists on
the ground.
The number of casualties was likely to
rise because many of the people have been buried in the rubble of
buildings that collapsed in the shelling, the Observatory added.
Assad’s
troops are in firm control of the provincial capital, also called
Idlib, while dozens of rebel brigades control the surrounding
countryside. Clashes between the warring sides have been fierce as
Assad’s troops try to push opposition fighters further away from the
city.
With a population of 40,000 people, Saraqeb is
Idlib’s second largest urban center. It has been under opposition’s
control for more than a year and it is strategically important for both
sides because of its location along the highway that links Syria’s
largest city, Aleppo, with the capital, Damascus, the seat of Assad’s
power.
The town also connects Aleppo, the country’s
commercial hub that has been carved up between government- and
rebel-held areas over the past year, with the coastal city of Latakia.
The city is a stronghold of Syria’s ruling Alawite sect, which the
president’s family also belongs to.
Opposition
fighters have been using the highway to ferry their own supplies and
have been launching guerrilla attacks on army convoys travelling between
military bases in Idlib province and Aleppo.
The
Observatory’s director Rami Abdul Rahman said the army’s latest
offensive on Saraqeb could be a push to set the stage for an eventual
offensive on Aleppo. But the rebels have kept their ground at least 15
kilometres (9 miles) from the city, forcing the regime to rely on its
air power.
More than 93,000 people have been killed
since the Syrian conflict started in March 2011 as largely peaceful
protests against Assad’s rule. It escalated into a civil war after
opposition supporters took up arms to fight a brutal government
crackdown on dissent.
Lately, the conflict has taken
increasingly sectarian overtones with Sunni Muslim majority dominating
the opposition forces while Assad’s regime is mostly made up of
Alawaites, an offshoot sect of Shiite Islam.
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