Syrian Airstrike Near Damascus Kills Dozens

A Syrian airstrike killed dozens of people in a rebel-held area near the capital, Damascus, on Friday, BBC reports.

Witnesses claim the strikes hit a public square in the rebel-held district of Hamouriyeh, a district in eastern Ghouta that has been besieged by security forces.

The Syrian Observatory claimed six children were among the 32 people who died in several raids, in what it described as a massacre.

Syrian government officials have not commented on the incident.

On Tuesday, at least 65 people were killed in a Syrian air raid on a livestock market controlled by the Islamic State in Khansaa, south of the Kurdish-held city of Qamishli in northeastern Syria, Reuters reports.

The past few months have seen a rapid increase in strikes by regime forces on rebel-held areas, raising concerns that the regime is benefitting from U.S.-led strikes on ISIS, using their cover to intensify attacks on the moderate opposition.

Syrian Rebels Seize Strategic Government Army Base in Deraa

Syrian rebels including Jabhat al-Nusra fighters seized a strategic government army base in the southwestern Deraa province on Sunday, Reuters reports.

In the latest rebel advance in the south, hundreds of fighters took over the Brigade 82 base near the town of Sheikh Maskeen, strategically located near a north-south highway linking Damascus and Jordan.

“This advance will help us cut supply routes of the regime forces in the south from their supplies in the north to be able to eventually take over Deraa city,” Colonel Saber Safar, a leader of the First Army, a major faction of Western-backed rebels in the “Southern Front” grouping, told Reuters.

President Bashar al-Assad’s forces have been on the defensive in the south, losing large swaths of territory in the countryside as well as parts of the border with Israel near the Golan Heights.

Rebels have failed several times to seize the nearby town of Sheikh Maskeen, one of the main army supply routes to the city of Deraa, which is mostly in government hands. Fighters claim the capture of the base had helped them to overrun most of the town.

A show of rebel unity in the south has led to a surge in momentum there, and has become one of the few major strongholds of the mainstream opposition, who have been weakened elsewhere by the advance of the Islamic State in the east and north, and Jabhat-al Nusra in the northwest.

U.S. Troops Headed to Middle East to Train Syrian Rebels

Some 100 troops are scheduled to head to the Middle East in the new few days to set up training sites for Syrian opposition fighters battling the Islamic State, the Pentagon said on Friday.

“Admiral John Kirby, the Pentagon press secretary, said the troops, mostly special operations forces, were authorized last week and would begin arriving in countries outside Syria in the coming days, with a subsequent wave of several hundred military trainers following in the weeks thereafter,” Al Jazeera reports.

Kirby did not indicate where the first advance detachment of troops would conduct their training, but Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia have offered to host sites where U.S. forces could train Syrian rebels to battle the Islamic State.

“They’re going to … take a look at what’s there and prepare for further deployments,” Kirby said.

The U.S. military has said that it expects to “send more than 400 troops for the training mission and several hundred support forces for a total of about 1,000 or more. Officials plan to train 5,000 Syrian fighters a year for three years,” Reuters added.

Kirby also added that the active recruitments of Syrian trainees had not begun, but U.S. officials have suggested that training could begin in the spring, with the first trainees returning to Syria at year’s end.

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Photo Courtesy of AP Images