Syrian Army Pounds ISIS Positions, Says Monitoring Group

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition-backed watchdog group, alleges that Bashar al-Assad’s army has been bombing major bases of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria in coordination with the Iraqi government.

“The regime air force has been pounding ISIS’s bases, including those in the northern province of Raqa and Hasakeh in the northeast,” which borders Iraq, said the UK-based group, quoted in the Daily Star.

The Syrian regime “was responding to the fact that ISIS brought into Syria heavy weapons including tanks captured from the Iraqi army,” the paper writes. “In Raqqa, the air force bombed the area surrounding ISIS’s main headquarters in Syria, as well as the group’s religious courts, said the Observatory, adding there were no reported casualties.”

Syrian Army Retakes Kessab

The AP reports that government forces scored two key victories over the weekend, pushing rebel fighters from their last strongholds near Turkey, taking two villages and restoring regime control to the border crossing, and retaking the Christian-Armenian town of Kessab.

“The military’s advances fully reversed the gains rebels had made during their three-month campaign in Latakia province, the rugged coastal region that is the ancestral heartland of President Bashar Assad,” the wire reports. “The counteroffensive’s success is the latest blow to the rebels, who have suffered a string of bitter recent setbacks in Syria’s more than three-year-old civil war.

“Islamic rebel factions launched their surprise assault in Latakia in March, pushing south from the Turkish border to seize a string of villages in the lush, mountainous terrain. The military, nervous about an incursion in a bastion of government support, dispatched reinforcements to blunt the rebel advance and eventually turn the tide.”

Also on Sunday, Assad fighters retook the embattled majority Christian-Armenian town of Kessab, effectively reversing three months of gains made by rebels in Latakia province.

“The withdrawal of rebel forces, including some linked to al-Qaida, is another strategic and symbolic blow to an opposition that has been undermined by recent gains by Assad’s forces and by infighting,” Reuters reports.

SANA, the Syrian state news agency, said government forces had “restored stability and security” to Kessab, removing mines and explosives planted by “terrorist gangs,” the regime’s name for the rebels.

Moderate Syria Rebel Officers Quit Over ‘Lack of Military Aid’

AFP reports that nine top officers from the Free Syrian Army have “resigned over shortages and mismanagement of military aid from donor countries” to the moderate opposition in its fight against rebel insurgents and the Assad regime.

“We seek your [the rebels’] forgiveness in resigning today, leaving behind our responsibility as chiefs of battlefronts and [opposition] military councils,” the officers said in a statement.

The wire says that some Western military aid has “trickled” to the Syrian National Coalition in recent weeks, but that overall the U.S. has been “reticent to arm rebels over fears advanced weapons could end up in jihadist hands.”

Kidnap Negotiations Reveal Foreigners at the Helm of al-Qaida-Linked Group

The National reports that Western-backed Free Syrian Army commanders fighting in southern Syria have had secret meetings with leaders from al-Qaida-linked Jabhat al-Nusra, in a renewed effort to free a rebel leader abducted by Nusra last month. The latest meetings took place in al-Jizza, eastern Deraa, a Nusra stronghold.

“A source familiar with the meeting said all of the leading al-Nusra members, or emirs, present at the negotiations were Jordanians, underscoring the role of foreign militants in the group’s leadership structure. Its rank and file fighters are overwhelmingly Syrian,” the paper says. “Among those taking part were Sami Al Uraydi, known as Abu Mahmoud Al Shami, a Jordanian of Palestinian origin, considered a religious authority within al-Nusra.”

“According to the account of the meeting — which was held without the knowledge of other FSA units and remains a closely guarded secret — the al-Nusra commanders again refused to release Col. Ahmed Nehmeh, an FSA officer they ambushed and captured in the early hours of May 4.”

Suggested Reads from Our Editorial Team

LA Times: Why the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria Has so Many Names

AFP: Moderate Syria Rebels Quit Over ‘Lack of Military Aid’

Carnegie: Iran: Syria’s Lone Regional Ally