BEIRUT: Syrian rebels said they had overrun a major military checkpoint in Deraa yesterday and hoped it would allow them to capture the southern city, the cradle of their 27-month-old uprising.
Activists uploaded video showing fighters blowing up two high-rise buildings that had flanked the army post, flattening the entire area in a cloud of dust.
The Syrian conflict began in Deraa as a peaceful protest movement against President Bashar Al Assad’s rule, but has spread across the country and degenerated into civil war.
More than 100,000 people have died, according to the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which works with a network of activists across Syria.
Rami Abdulrahman, the head of the Observatory, said the fall of the army post was strategically significant for Deraa, where protesters first marched against four decades of Assad family rule from the city’s Omari mosque in March 2011.
“Now the army is under threat there. The rebels haven’t liberated all of the old city. There are still two neighbourhoods with soldiers, but this could change the balance of power there,” Abdulrahman told Reuters.
Local opposition activists were more upbeat, saying rebels had destroyed nearly all the military’s 48 posts in the city and had forced soldiers to retreat.
“This means Deraa’s old city is liberated. It is a big deal for all Syrians: the heart of the revolution has been freed,” said an activist called Ammar, speaking by phone. The Omari mosque, which served as a gathering point and makeshift clinic when protests began, was also recaptured but has been nearly destroyed by tank and artillery fire, he said.
Meanwhile, a Kurdish militia allied with Turkey’s rebel Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) imposed a curfew on the Syrian border town of Amuda yesterday after its forces shot three protesters dead, activists said.
The Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD), which has controlled large swathes of Hasakeh province in northeastern Syria since government troops withdrew from Kurdish-majority areas last year, said one of its fighters was killed in an ambush by a rival armed group.
Agencies
