Syria troops advance after seizing rebel stronghold

DAMASCUS — Syrian troops have advanced west of the fallen rebel stronghold of Yabrud, entering a new village in the Qalamoun region near the Lebanese border, state news agency SANA said Tuesday.

“The Syrian army is progressing in the village of Ras Al Ain, southwest of Yabrud, killing a large number of terrorists,” said SANA, using the regime’s term for rebels.

Earlier, a security source told AFP the army had taken control of several hills overlooking the village.

The army, backed by Lebanese Hizbollah fighters and pro-regime militiamen, seized the strategic town of Yabrud Sunday after a month of shelling and air strikes, as it moves to sever rebel supply routes across the border.

The army and Hizbollah have now set their sights on the villages of Rankus, south of Yabrud, and Flita and Ras Al Maara, to its northwest.

Elsewhere, regime planes bombed the northern city of Aleppo, killing at least four people, including two children, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based group that relies on activists and other witnesses inside Syria.

The violence in Aleppo came as a prominent female activist detained there a day earlier by rebels for refusing to wear the Islamic headscarf was released.

The Army of Mujahedeen, which had detained Marcell Shehwaro and her friend Mohammad Khalili, issued a statement “apologising in the strongest terms” for the incident.

Elsewhere in Aleppo, troops battled Islamist rebels, including the Al Qaeda affiliated Al Nusra Front, leaving at least seven people dead, according to the observatory.

In the Damascus area, five people were killed by opposition mortar fire, state news agency SANA reported.

Four people were killed in the Jaramana suburb, southeast of the capital, and another in the city itself, SANA said.

In the central Syrian city of Homs, five people were killed and 25 others wounded in a mortar attack against Mahata, a majority Christian area, and Inshaat, in the west of the city, SANA added.

More than 146,000 people have been killed in Syria’s three-year war, and nearly half the population has been displaced.

The March 2011 uprising against President Bashar Assad initially took the form of peaceful protests but escalated into a full-blown insurgency after the regime launched a brutal crackdown on dissent.