Rebels attack airbase in northwestern Syria

Aftermath of an explosion at a petrol station Fierce fighting erupted overnight and continued Wednesday as rebels attacked regime troops stationed around an airbase in northwestern Syria causing casualties on both sides, a watchdog said. Clashes between mostly jihadist rebel fighters and President Bashar al-Assad's forces at Taftanaz airbase in Idlib province killed four insurgents and an unknown number of soldiers, the UK based group Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
The rebel assault came after authorities announced the temporary closure of the international airport in Aleppo province on Tuesday, after days of attacks there by the insurgents who hold vast swathes of territory in northern Syria.
Fighting also broke out around the crucial Wadi Deif base, one of the last regime bastions in northwestern Syria, the Britain-based Observatory said, in a fresh jihadist-led bid to wrest control of the strategic post.
Insurgents captured the nearby town of Maaret al-Numan, located on the important Damascus-Aleppo highway, in October.
Near Damascus, regime forces bombarded districts to the southwest of the capital including Daraya, the site of a massacre last year, and where the army has been launching a fierce bid to regain control.
Meanwhile, a group of 20 Syrian soldiers, including a general, defected from the army and fled to Turkey on Tuesday, joining hundreds of other ex-troops from Syria’s military.
Around 40 people, including defectors and family members, crossed the border into the southern Turkish province of Hatay. They were taken to the Apaydin refugee camp, which holds all Syria’s defected soldiers, Turkey’s state-run Anatolia news agency reported.
Since the start of the civil war between Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime and rebel forces, dozens of senior army officers have defected and headed to Turkey.
Turkish authorities have refused to give the exact number of Syrian defectors, who typically join the anti-Assad Free Syrian Army.
Turkey, which supports the insurgency, is housing a total of 150,000 Syrian refugees at camps near the border.
Last month, the attorney-general of Syria’s northwestern province of Aleppo declared defection from President Bashar al-Assad’s regime in a video posted Wednesday by activists.
Judge Ahmed al-Nuaimi said he defected in protest at Assad regime’s “crimes” against the Syrian people and that he joined the opposition, the Free Syrian Judges Council.