Syrian government warplanes hammered the Damascus suburbs and other targets Wednesday and left dozens dead in an airstrike on a fuel station. The fighting raged as President Bashar al-Assad’s government works to ramp up its air attacks and rebels target air bases.
At least 50 people died and dozens were wounded in the Damascus suburb of Mleiha in the fuel station air raid, the opposition Local Coordination Committees of Syria said, citing initial reports.
“The number of martyrs is likely to be increased due to continuous pulling of the bodies from under the rubble,” the LCC said.
he victims were among 105 people killed in the country on Wednesday, most of whom died in Damascus and its suburbs.
Aerial shelling was reported in the Damascus suburb of Harasta, in the cities of Aleppo and Deir Ezzor and other locations.
Rebels fight for an airbase
In Idlib province, Syrian rebels, including jihadists, fought to wrest a key military air base from government forces Wednesday, the opposition said, as anti-regime fighters kept up the heat on al-Assad’s forces.
Al-Nusra Front, a militant group that the United States designated last month as a terrorist movement, is among three rebel factions attacking the Taftanaz military air base, rebels said in a statement.
“The battle to liberate Taftanaz military airport has started,” the rebels said. “Taftanaz airport has been delivering horrors to Muslims. The warplanes fly from there on a daily basis, to throw explosive barrels on villages and towns.”
The other factions are Battalions of Ahrar Al-shaam and the Islamic Forefront. Ahrar is an Islamist coalition with some Salafist elements that cooperates with the Free Syrian Army. The Islamic Forefront is a larger umbrella group of Islamist organizations; one of its members is Ahrar. About 400 soldiers are based at the airport, along with a number of pro-government militia members. At the base are 30 planes, including transportation craft and fighting jets; seven armored vehicles, including tanks and armored personnel carriers; artillery and rocket launchers. Casualties have been reported on both sides in the fighting, but precise numbers were not available.
Al-Nusra Front has claimed hundreds of attacks
Many of the rebel fighters are former government soldiers who’ve defected to the opposition, but the popular revolt has attracted anti-Western jihadist types, including the al-Nusra Front.
The front is a cover for al Qaeda in Iraq, the U.S. State Department said. AQI fought against the Iraqi government and Western forces during the Iraq war.
Last month, the State Department said al-Nusra had been added to the list of aliases for AQI, already designated a foreign terrorist organization.
Al-Nusra has claimed nearly 600 attacks since November 2011, the State Department said, including 40 suicide attacks.
The State Department said the group “has sought to portray itself as part of the legitimate Syrian opposition while it is, in fact, an attempt by AQI to hijack the struggles of the Syrian people for its own malign purposes.”
But the group has support among Syrians sympathetic to the rebellion, and opposition members urged the United States to rescind its decision to list the group as a terrorist entity.
Washington’s former point person on Syria’s transition, Frederic Hof, has said that Syrians might have to make uncomfortable alliances because they “are fighting for their lives against an extraordinarily brutal and terroristic regime.”
But once al-Assad is gone, he agrees that al-Nusra, which was an Assad ally when the dictator trained the group to commit terror acts in Iraq, must be dealt with to prevent it from doing the same in Syria.