http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Middle-East/2013/Mar-10/209489-syria-rebels-launch-new-assault-on-key-homs-district-activists.ashx#axzz2N8yD4rEJ
Syria rebels stage surprise assault in Homs
March 10, 2013 11:02 AM (Last updated: March 10, 2013 01:41 PM)
DAMASCUS: Rebels in Syria staged a surprise dawn attack on Sunday against the
key district of Baba Amr in the central city of Homs, a year after regime
forces retook it after a deadly month-long siege.
The attack came as Islamist insurgents in the oil-producing east of the
war-ravaged country said they had established local religious committees to
administer the area, including policing, the judiciary and emergency services.
The assault on a key hub of the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad's
regime also comes two years after the outbreak of peaceful protest against his
rule descended into armed conflict when the regime responded with a brutal
crackdown.
"At dawn, the rebels launched a surprise attack on Baba Amr, which they have
entered," Syrian Observatory for Human Rights director Rami Abdel Rahman, who
was in contact with the rebels, told AFP.
For more than a month in 2012, regime forces pounded Baba Amr relentlessly,
seeking to oust insurgents holed up in Homs. Assad's troops eventually retook
the district on March 1 last year after a bloody campaign.
Assad himself toured the battered neighbourhood last March 27, assuring
residents who had stayed that it would be rebuilt and that normal life would
resume in Baba Amr.
Hundreds of people, many of them civilians, were killed in the fighting that
left much of the neighbourhood in ruins, according to rights groups.
As well as those killed in Baba Amr, dozens of bodies were found in
neighbouring districts of Homs, and included those of people fleeing the
fighting, according to the Observatory.
Two foreign journalists, American reporter Marie Colvin of The Sunday Times in
Britain and French photojournalist Remi Ochlik, were among those killed when a
makeshift media centre in Baba Amr was shelled by Syrian forces.
In the east of the country, where large swathes of territory are now under
rebel control, rebel groups including the jihadist Al-Nusra Front have set up a
religious council to administer affairs, the Observatory said on Sunday.
"God commanded the Islamic battalions to form a religious council in the east
to administer the affairs of the people and fill a security gap," the groups
said in a statement distributed by the Britain-based watchdog.
The council will include several offices charged with functions including
justice, policing and emergency services, it said.
Video footage showed an convoy draped with black flags bearing Islamic
inscriptions in the Deir Ezzor area and rebels attaching a banner to a building
in Mayadeen, on which is written "Religious Committee of the Eastern Region."
Rebels in the eastern provinces of Deir Ezzor, Hassaka and Raqa have made
significant military gains as they battle Assad's forces.
The Al-Nusra Front, completely unknown before the rebellion, has been a rebel
standard-bearer since mid-2012 when it became the spearhead of the insurgency
ahead of the Free Syrian Army.
FSA fighters, composed mainly of army deserters, have told AFP that despite
being fewer in number, the Al-Nusra jihadists have better logistic and economic
backing and receive financing "from abroad."
The Front has focused on strategic targets in the east such as oil wells, and
also recruits and pays local fighters. It makes no secret of its aims to see
Syria become an Islamist state.
Damascus accuses both Saudi Arabia and Qatar of financing Islamist groups
battling the regime.
It labels all armed opposition "terrorists" financed from abroad in the
insurgency which the United Nations says has killed more than 70,000 people
since it erupted in March 2011.
Meanwhile in Manila on Sunday, the government hailed Saturday's release of 21
Filipino UN peacekeepers freed by Syrian rebels into Jordan after they were
abducted on the Golan on Wednesday.
President Benigno Aquino "was very happy to receive the news," his spokeswoman
said
(The Daily Star :: Lebanon News :: http://www.dailystar.com.lb)
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