Syria army captures key town in blow to rebels

The Syrian army captured a strategic town near the Lebanese border today after a gruelling three-week battle, handing a heavy defeat to rebels and solidifying a shift in the country's civil war in favour of President Bashar Assad's regime.
Both sides had dug in for an all-out battle for Qusair, which rebels seized last year, a sign of its importance for both as a key crossroads of supply lines between Damascus and western and northern Syria. The regime assault also marked another key turning point in the conflict: the most overt involvement yet by its Lebanese Hezbollah allies, whose fighters boosted the military's firepower in overcoming the rebels.

The town's fall could boost the momentum for Syrian troops in rolling back rebel gains in central Syria in past months. The blow to the rebel movement could also further discourage it from entering peace negotiations with the regime, which the United States and Russia have been trying to put together in Geneva.
The Syrian military triumphantly declared in a rare statement read on state TV today that it had "cleansed" Qusair of rebels. It said the town's capture was a "clear message to all those participating in the aggression against Syria", a sign clearly directed at the rebels' regional backers that the regime believes the tide is turning in the war.

Images broadcast by media embedded with Syrian troops showed a deserted town with heavily damaged buildings and the Syrian flag flying over a clock tower in its main square. Syrian soldiers celebrated atop rubble, waving Syrian flags and chanting pro-regime slogans.
Military bulldozers were removing rubble and clearing roads as armored vehicles whizzed by.

Outnumbered and outgunned, rebel fighters held out for weeks after the regime launched its assault on Qusair on May 19. They inflicted heavier than expected casualties on the Hezbollah forces who joined the battle, forcing the group to admit its involvement as dozens of its fighters were brought home for burial. As fighting intensified, rebels called on fighters from all over Syria to come to their aid, and foreign militants were suspected to be playing a large role in the town's defence.

But the rebels were running short of ammunition, and they finally withdrew from the town after an intense bombardment overnight, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based opposition activist group.
"The Assad regime and the Iranian militias supporting it have entered Qusair," a statement by the main Western-backed Syrian National Council said, lamenting the "enormous imbalance in the balance of power.