Assad regime, allies gain ground in Hama battle

The Syrian army and allied forces advanced against opposition groups in western Syria near Hama city on Sunday, building on recent strategic gains in the area, a military source and a monitoring group said.
Government forces captured the town of Halfaya and nearby villages, they said, taking back territory that the opposition fighters seized last year from forces loyal to Bashar Assad.
“We gained control of Halfaya and several hills in the area,” the Syrian regime source said. “The army will of course continue its fight.”
Boosted by Russian airstrikes and Iranian-backed militias, the regime has pushed into opposition areas north of Hama, expanding its control this week along the western highway that links Damascus and Aleppo.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitoring group, said the regime began advancing into areas near Halfaya when opposition fighters withdrew on Sunday, following intense battles and airstrikes.
Sources on the opposition side could not immediately be reached for comment.
Warplanes have pounded Halfaya and swathes of territory near the highway in a region vitally important to Assad regime, which has shored up its rule in the populated west of the country.
Opposition factions, including Free Syrian Army groups, have been fighting fiercely to defend the towns in recent days.
The regime’s earlier capture of Soran, its northern gateway to Hama city, meant it had reversed most of the territorial gains made by opposition fighters in their major offensive last month.
With the help of its allies, the regime has gained an upper hand in the six-year war against the wide array of opposition fighters.
An official in Damascus, meanwhile, said an Israeli attack on a Syrian training camp near the Golan Heights killed three members of a pro-regime militia on Sunday.
The Al-Fawwar camp in Syria’s southwestern Quneitra province is used by the National Defense Forces (NDF), which command some 90,000 fighters across Syria.
The NDF official said that two fighters were also wounded in the Israeli attack, but said it was unclear whether the damage was inflicted by an airstrike or shelling.
Another Syrian source inside the training camp told AFP that around 6:00 am local time (0300 GMT), “security guards at the camp saw what looked like three fireballs coming toward the camp.”
“Then there were several consecutive blasts because of the explosion of ammunition warehouses” that firefighters worked hard to extinguish, the source said.
The source also said that they were “Israeli rockets” but could not specify what kind of missiles may have been used.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said the attack had targeted a “weapons warehouse” in the camp.
Israel’s army declined to comment on Sunday on the attack.
On Friday, the Israeli army said it targeted positions inside Syria in retaliation for mortar fire that hit the northern part of the Golan Heights.
At the time, Syria’s official news agency SANA said Israel had struck a Syrian army position in the province of Quneitra on the Golan plateau, “causing damage.”
The Syrian government labels rebel groups and jihadists fighting the regime as “terrorists” and accuses Israel of backing them.
Syria and Israel are still technically at war, although the border remained largely quiet for decades until 2011, when the Syrian conflict broke out.
The Israeli side is hit sporadically by what are usually deemed to be stray rounds, and Israel has recently taken to opening fire in retaliation.

Source: Arab News