Beirut: Syrian government forces have pushed into Kasab, a village on the border with Turkey and in the coastal heartland of President Bashar Al Assad’s Alawite minority sect, a monitoring group and state media said.
The withdrawal of most rebel forces from the village — including some linked to Al Qaida — is another blow to an opposition that has been undermined by recent gains by Al Assad’s forces and by infighting.
A number of fighters stayed behind in Kasab after the departure of most of the rebels, who included fighters from the Al Qaida-linked Al Nusra Front, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said late on Saturday.
On Sunday morning, Syrian state television said government forces had “restored stability and security” to Kasab and engineering teams were removing mines and explosives planted by “terrorist gangs”, the government’s customary term for rebels.
The Observatory said clashes in the area continued from around midnight on Saturday night, but did not give casualty figures.
Syrian government forces were assisted by the Lebanese Shiite militia Hezbollah as well as fighters of Syrian and foreign nationality, the Observatory said.
Rebel forces had taken Kasab, a majority Armenian Christian village, in March, the first time they were able to capture a settlement on the Mediterranean coast. One of Al Assad’s cousins, a militia commander, was killed in fighting in the area.
Syria’s coastal areas are the historic homeland of Al Assad’s family and home to many members of his Alawite sect, an off-shoot of Shiite Islam. The rebels fighting to overthrow Al Assad are overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim.
