DAMASCUS: Elite Hezbollah fighters poured across the border from Lebanon into Syria yesterday, a watchdog and others said, bolstering Syrian regime forces battling to retake the key rebel stronghold of Qusayr.
Washington expressed concern about Hezbollah’s role and diplomats said the EU was poised to place the powerful Shia militant group’s military wing on its list of international terrorist groups.
In central Homs province, Hezbollah fighters were reportedly leading the battle for Qusayr, three days after the Syrian regime began an assault to regain control of the town.
“It’s clear Hezbollah is leading the assault,” Syrian Observatory for Human Rights director Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP, adding that government aircraft were pressing a bombardment and “much of the town is now destroyed.”
A source close to Hezbollah said it “has sent new elite troops to Qusayr”.
Hezbollah’s television channel broadcast images of funerals for five fighters it said were killed carrying out their “jihadist duty”.
The Observatory said more than 100 people have been killed in Qusayr since the fighting began on Sunday, including 31 Hezbollah fighters, 70 rebels and nine soldiers.
Abdel Rahman described the rebel response to the assault in Qusayr as “fierce,” but expressed concern for the fate of some 25,000 trapped civilians.
Pro-regime daily Al Watan said loyalists had taken control of all Qusayr’s official buildings and “raised the Syrian flag” above them.
The town is a key strategic prize as it sits on the main highway between Damascus and the Mediterranean coast, and also controls rebel supply routes from the mainly Sunni Muslim port of Tripoli in neighbouring Lebanon.
“It is important for the Syrians, the Iranians and Hezbollah to control the road” linking Tripoli to Syria, Lebanese analyst Waddah Sharara said.
Tripoli is also home to a minority of Alawites, an offshoot of Shia to which Assad belongs. There have been repeated clashes in the city between the rival communities. A security source yesterday confirmed the death of a Sunni man from the city in the latest fighting.
Lebanon is officially neutral on the violence in Syria, but a range of Lebanese groups are openly intervening in the conflict.
Hezbollah has sent fighters to back the regime, which has for years facilitated the transportation to it of weapons from Iran.
Some Sunni Lebanese have also joined the rebels, with sources saying the body of one such fighter was returned to Wadi Khaled yesterday.
Meanwhile, key Syrian ally Iran said it was willing to attend a peace conference in Geneva proposed by Russia and the US.
And European diplomatic sources said Syria had submitted the names of five potential regime negotiators for the conference, expected to be held in the first half of June.
UN deputy secretary-general Jan Eliasson said it was vital that both the government and the rebels send credible negotiating teams.
“There have to be two, credible delegations to negotiate,” Eliasson told reporters. “We’re working very hard for a meeting as soon as possible. We’re in contact with the parties, and with the Security Council members, that are involved. But we hope very much that the meeting will take place, and soon,” he said. AFP
