People run for cover after what activists said was shelling by regime forces in Raqqa province, eastern Syria yesterday.
AFP/Damascus
Syrian rebels converged yesterday on a military airport in Aleppo, where troops massed for a threatened assault, as the US said it was considering “all possible options” to help the opposition.
Buoyed by victory in the strategic town of Qusayr on the border with Lebanon, President Bashar al-Assad’s troops have been readying to open a northern front in Aleppo province on the border with Turkey.
The 26-month conflict pitting mainly Sunni Muslim rebels against Assad’s regime, dominated by his Alawite sect of Shia Islam, has spilled over into Lebanon and Turkey, on occasion.
It has also threatened to draw in Israel, where a minister admitted yesterday that Assad could triumph in the war which has already killed more than 94,000 and forced millions to flee their homes.
After suffering a string of battlefield losses in and around Qusayr in the past week, rebel fighters advanced on the Minnigh airbase in Aleppo province yesterday, a monitoring group reported.
“Opposition fighters have seized the radar tower in the Minnigh airbase,” Syrian Observatory for Human Rights director Rami Abdel Rahman said.
“Fierce clashes have raged in the airbase since dawn Sunday,” he added.
State media said the rebel assault had been repulsed.
“Troops from our heroic army stopped terrorist groups from assaulting the Minnigh army airbase,” said the official Sana news agency.
The development came as US Secretary of State John Kerry postponed a visit to the Middle East in order to attend White House talks on Syria, US officials said.
Kerry is struggling to put together a peace conference on Syria as Washington comes under increasing pressure to arm the opposition, although it has provided aid for things like night-vision goggles and body armour.
President Barack Obama has asked his national security team—which includes Kerry—“to consider all possible options that would accomplish our objectives of helping the Syrian opposition serve the essential needs of the Syrian people and hastening a political transition to a post-Assad Syria”, National Security Council spokeswoman Bernadette Meehan said.
“We have prepared a wide range of options for the president’s consideration, and internal meetings to discuss the situation in Syria are routine,” she said.
But she said there were “no new announcements at this time”.
Israel’s intelligence minister, Yuval Steinitz, said Assad might succeed in crushing the armed uprising with the help of his main regional ally Iran and the Lebanese Shia movement Hezbollah.
“It might be the case that, at the end of the day, Assad ... might get the upper hand,” he said.
“In such time of conflict, if the opposition is not making any progress, and the regime manages to survive and to get very strong support from other countries, namely Iran and Hezbollah, which is a proxy of Iran, in the end it might just survive,” he said.
Syria was receiving “very significant militant support” from Iran and Hezbollah, with thousands of Shia militants fighting alongside Assad’s forces in “very clear formations and with very good equipment—this might help”, he said.
Israel has repeatedly shied away from involvement in Syria’s civil war, insisting it is not backing one side or the other in the conflict.
Meanwhile Saudi Arabia condemned Hezbollah’s “flagrant” intervention in the conflict.
