Experts said on
Thursday that the Syrian regime has altered its strategy and is now
battling to control highways instead of deploying its forces in a bid to
regain points and stop the infiltration of fighters and weapons into
Damascus.
To achieve this goal, experts and sources close to
Syria's top security forces said that the Syrian army is being supported
by local armed men battling in their own towns and villages and who
were trained in Iran and Russia .
The main goal of the new strategy is to allow the army to move easily between cities under its control," security sources added.
"Taking
control of al-Qussair will link Homs city to the coast. While
controlling Rastan will link Homs to Hama," said the same source.
In
this context, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights director Rami
Abdel Rahman said that controlling the road linking Daraa to the highway
heading to the coast is vital for the regime.
"It wants to link those regions to show Syria's citizens they can travel there securely," he added.
The
Syrian conflict started with largely peaceful protests against Assad's
regime in March 2011 but eventually turned into a civil war.
The
fighting has exacted a huge toll on the country, killing more than
70,000 people, laying waste to cities, towns and villages and forcing
more than a million people to flee their homes and seek refuge abroad.
Millions have also been displaced inside Syria.
International aid agencies have been pleading for funds to help refugees in neighboring countries such as Jordan and Lebanon.
They
have also been asking the Syrian government to allow aid convoys into
the country and facilitate access to the area inside cities and towns
that have been affected by fighting.
Positions:
The U.S. intelligence community assesses with varying degrees of
confidence that the Syrian regime used chemical weapons on a small
scale, the White House said on Thursday, adding however that such
assessments were not enough and that "credible and corroborated" facts
were needed.
"Given the stakes involved,
and what we have learned from our own recent experiences, intelligence
assessments alone are not sufficient - only credible and corroborated
facts that provide us with some degree of certainty will guide our
decision-making," Miguel Rodriguez, White House director of the office
of legislative affairs, said in a letter to lawmakers.
Meanwhile, the Iranian
Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Hussein Amir Abdul Lahyan met with
his Russian counterpart Mikhail Bogdanov with talks featuring high on
the need to exert joint efforts on the regional and international levels
in the context of reaching a political settlement for the Syrian crisis
and launching a dialogue among the Syrian factions.
This as,
Former Syrian Opposition Coalition Leader Ahmad Moaz al-Khatib called on
Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah to withdraw all
members from Syria in order to "prevent the conflict from turning into a
sectarian war".
In this context, al-Khatib said in a message he
posted on Facebook that “Hezbollah’s interference in Syria has
complicated the situation”, calling on Sayyed Nasrallah to communicate
with the rebels in the Shiite areas in a bid to maintain security.
In
this regard, al-Khatib stressed that “some parties are planning to drag
the whole Islamic world into a Sunni-Shiite battle that flares in
Syria, and stretches to all countries in the region, including Lebanon,
Iran and Turkey."
Al-Khatib also reminded Nasrallah that the
Syrian people received hundreds of thousands of Lebanese refugees during
the July 2006 war "launched by Israel on ‘the Shiite force'”.
AP/LBCI/REUTERS
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