A Lebanese woman and supporter of Hezbollah holds a picture of Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Mashghara, in the western Bekaa Valley, during a ceremony marking the 13th anniversary of Israel’s military withdrawal from Lebanon.
ISTANBUL: Syria’s opposition resumed talks yesterday aimed at closing their fractious ranks, as government forces launched a fierce onslaught on a rebel-held border town to try to gain the upper hand in the civil war.
A failure of the opposition to unite could weaken the hand of Russia and the United States, co-sponsors of a proposed peace conference on the war, which has killed 80,000 and threatens to spill over borders and whip up wider sectarian violence.
The US and Russian foreign ministers are to meet in Paris tomorrow to discuss how to shepherd Syrian President Bashar Al Assad and the opposition into the talks in Geneva.
As opposition leaders met in Istanbul, Assad’s forces reinforced by Iranian-backed Shia Lebanese Hezbollah fighters unleashed heavy artillery and tank fire to try to seize more rebel terrain in the Sunni Muslim border town of Qusair yesterday, sources on both sides said.
Syria is becoming a proxy conflict between Shia Iran which backs Assad, whose Alawite faith is an offshoot of Shi’ism, and Arab states which support Assad’s mostly Sunni enemies. George Sabra, head of the opposition Syrian National Coalition, said thousands of fighters from Iran and Hezbollah were involved in the attack on Qusair, close to the Lebanese border, and in battles in the capital Damascus. Assad’s forces are believed to have seized about two-thirds of Qusair and largely surrounded the rebels. But the price was high and rebels insisted they were preventing further advances.
The insurgents see Qusair as a critical battle to preserve cross-border supply lines and deny Assad a victory they fear may give him the edge in the prospective peace talks next month.
More than 22 people in opposition-held areas were killed by yesterday afternoon, most of them rebels, and dozens wounded, according to pro-opposition monitoring group the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. The pro-opposition Syrian Network for Human Rights said 73 people were killed by Assad’s forces. The United States, concerned by the rising influence of hardline Islamists, has pressed the Syrian National Coalition to resolve its divisions and bring more liberals into the fold. Sources at the coalition, which began its third day of meetings, said major players would focus on such international demands for a broadening of the Islamist-dominated group, leaving leadership issues for later.Reuters
