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 Opposition fighters battling to topple President Bashar Assad's
government launched an assault on the base northeast of the city of
Raqqa on Wednesday, according to the Britain-based Syrian
Observatory for Human Rights.
Sporadic clashes were still underway Friday for the facility, known
as Base 17 because it houses the Syrian army's 17th Brigade, said
the Observatory's chief, Rami Abdurrahman.
Since Syria's crisis erupted in March 2011, the rebels have gained
control of much of the territory in the country's north along the
border with Turkey, but in February, Raqqa became the first city to
fall entirely into rebel hands.
In recent months, however, Assad's troops have gained the upper hand
on the battlefield, pushing rebel fighters out of a string of
opposition strongholds around the capital, Damascus.
Earlier this week, the army also took two towns and a military base
outside the northern city of Aleppo, Syria's largest urban center
that has been carved up between government- and rebel-held areas
since last year.
And on Tuesday, government troops captured the key town of Qara near
the Lebanese border during an ongoing offensive in the mountainous
western region of Syria. The operation is aimed at cutting off rebel
supply lines to Lebanon and cementing Assad's hold on a key corridor
from the capital to the Mediterranean coast.
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Syria's conflict, now well in its third year, has killed 120,000
people. The crisis started as a peaceful uprising against Assad but
deteriorated into all-out civil war after a brutal government
crackdown on dissent.
In the past year, the fighting has taken increasingly sectarian
overtones, pitting mostly Sunni Muslim rebels against Assad's ruling
elite that is predominantly made up of Alawaites, an offshoot sect
of Shiite Islam.
[Associated
Press]
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