Rebels Capture Village in Northwestern Syria
The Daily Star reports that rebels have captured Tal Meleh, a heavily contested village in northwestern Syria after heavy fighting there with government forces.
“The anti-regime Local Coordination Committees activist group said the rebels seized the village of Tal Meleh in Hama province Sunday, killing ‘large numbers’ of President Bashar Assad’s forces. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least 18 pro-government troops and two rebels were killed in the fighting.”
Tal Meleh has changed hands “several times” over the course of the war. The newspaper says it has obtained videos showing rebels from the Islamic Front “seizing a BMB tank and other heavy artillery belonging to the regime forces.”
Street By Street, Assad Extends Grip in Central Syria
Reuters reports that Assad is making steady progress in central Syria, once a rebel stronghold, in wake of rebel fighters’ withdrawal from Homs earlier this month.
“Rebels have fought Assad’s forces in Homs city since the early days of the uprising in 2011,” the wire says. “Until a year ago they held territory along the main highway from Homs to Damascus and controlled the capital’s eastern and southern suburbs.
“Assad’s enemies make much of the fact that the territory under his control may only account for a third of the country, but it forms an increasingly coherent core, linked by secure road connections, where a semblances of normality exists and the great majority of the population now lives. By contrast the rebel-held land – riven with internecine fighting and battered by waves of Assad’s aerial bombardment – offers neither security to the population nor a military platform to strike against his strongholds.”
Chief of Syria’s Air Defense Dies in Battle Near Capital
The New York Times reports that Lt. Gen. Hussein Ayoub Ishaq, the general in charge of Syria’s air defense forces, was killed in weekend fighting in Mleha, a district on the outskirts of Damascus.
Ishaq was “one of the highest-ranking officers to die during the country’s three-year conflict, commanded 60,000 troops in Syria’s air defense forces, said Hisham Jabber, a retired Lebanese army brigadier general who closely follows the military in neighboring Syria. But it was unclear what impact General Ishaq’s death would have on the battlefield, given that Syrian opposition fighters possess no aircraft, General Jabber added.
“’Will this have any effect on the military operation? No,” he said.
“It could have an effect on morale, but in the field there are many officers who can take his place.”
U.N. Seeking More Ways to Distribute Aid in Syria
The New York Times also reports that the U.N., “under pressure to ratchet up aid to nongovernmental organizations that can operate in the vast sections of Syria under opposition control,” is looking for more ways to distribute aid to rebel-controlled districts.
“More than 85 percent of food aid and more than 70 percent of medicines went to government-held areas in the first three months of this year, compared with roughly 50-50 a year ago, because of intensified conflict on the ground, according to the United Nations.
“That stark inequity, which Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is due to reveal publicly next week in his monthly assessment to the Security Council, is likely to inflame the sentiments of Western and Arab donors who are already leaning on United Nations agencies to divert aid from the government to zones under the control of Mr. Assad’s opponents.”
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