Syrian rebels fighting to topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad set their sights on Friday on the capital’s international airport in a bid to cut off the regime’s supplies, clashing with government troops nearby and again forcing the closure of the airport road.
A fighter who is part of the push against Damascus International Airport declared it a legitimate target, claiming that the regime has stationed troops and elite forces there, as well as military planes that transport ammunition.
Losing control of the airport would be a major blow to the regime, which has recently lost two air bases near the capital.
Photo: Reuters
It was unclear just how close to the airport, a few kilometers south of the capital, the battles reached. Fighting has intensified in the past week in the southern districts of the Syrian capital and its suburbs.
“The rebels have made major military gains, and have been fighting closer to the regime’s nerve center, which is the airport, for days, systematically chipping away at the political and military power off the Assad regime,” said Fawaz Gerges, head of the Middle East Center at the London School of Economics.
The clashes around Damascus, a city of 1.7 million, have already forced the suspension of commercial flights over the past week, although airport officials insist the facility remains open and was functioning normally on Friday.
Rebels said they were targeting the airport in an effort to cut military supplies to the government.
“This would send a very strong political message to the regime. It will be a moral victory, to say the least,” said the fighter, who gave only his first name, Nour, for security reasons. “The battle to cut off the regime supplies from the airport has started.”
Another rebel, speaking on condition of anonymity for the same reason, said the airport was now considered a “military zone.”
“We urge civilians to stay away,” said the rebel, a member of the Damascus area military command involved in Friday’s fighting.
Iran and Russia are widely believed to be supplying the al-Assad regime with weapons through the airport.
Tehran has not given details of its direct military aid to al-Assad’s regime, but has acknowledged that Revolutionary Guard envoys have been advisers in the past.
Moscow has rejected Western sanctions against al-Assad’s regime and said it would honor earlier signed weapons contracts with Syria for the delivery of anti-shipping and air defense missiles. The Kremlin insists that the Russian arms sales do not violate any international agreements.
At talks in Belfast, Northern Ireland, US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said on Friday that the US and Russia were committed to trying again to get al-Assad’s regime and the rebel opposition to talk about a political transition, setting aside a year-and-a-half of US-Russian disagreements that have paralyzed the international community.
However, Clinton said that the US would insist once again that al-Assad’s departure be a key part of that transition, a position not shared by the Russians.
On Friday, Syrian government forces were firing rockets and mortars at suburbs south of Damascus amid heavy clashes with rebels, according to activists. Most of the fighting was taking place in the towns of Aqraba and Beit Saham near the airport.
‘ABSURD MISTAKE’: The election commission said that there had been a failure to anticipate turnout after 14 polling stations ran short of ballot papers South Korean riot police yesterday cleared protesters from a Seoul polling station after a 35-hour blockade sparked by a shortage of ballot papers during local elections earlier this week. Wednesday’s election was the first nationwide vote since South Korean President Lee Jae-myung took office following the ouster of Yoon Suk-yeol over his short-lived martial law declaration. Lee’s ruling Democratic Party swept most races, but failed to flip the crucial Seoul mayoral seat. The South Korean National Election Commission apologized, blaming a failure to anticipate turnout after 14 polling stations in Seoul ran short of ballot papers. Some polling stations stayed open until 10pm to
France experienced its hottest spring on record, the French weather service said on Tuesday, after an exceptional early heat wave that also broke highs for the season in England and Wales. Meteo-France said the average nationwide temperature over March to May was 13.8°C — about 1.7°C above the norm, and surpassing records set in 2011 and 2020. “The warmest spring since records began in 1900,” it said in a bulletin. All three months were warmer than average, but the onset of an “unprecedented heatwave” late last month pushed the mercury to highs typically seen at the height of the summer. “Our country had never
A Sherpa guide was found crawling to base camp on Mount Everest a week after he went missing and was reunited with his family, who had given up hope he would return. Dawa Sherpa was last seen on Friday last week descending the mountain, but he did not reach base camp even though his client did. The pair were among the last climbers on the mountain as the climbing season came to an end and the route was dismantled. Dawa was located by a cleaning crew on Thursday morning as he was crawling down the snowy slopes around the Khumbu Icefall, just above
Chinese authorities are snuffing out any remembrance of the deadly 1989 military crackdown on student-led pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square, which happened 37 years ago yesterday, in a further tightening of a years-long campaign to erase what happened from public memory. Police told relatives of the victims they would not be allowed to visit a cemetery in Beijing on the anniversary of the crackdown, a person with knowledge of the matter said. Relatives of the victims visited the cemetery on the anniversary for more than 30 years to read memorial statements with police keeping watch, Amnesty International said. Hundreds of people,
RSS