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| Hezbollah flags, placards and sweets in Beirut's southern suburbs to mark Qusayr's fall |
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| The Qusayr boy with missing limbs |
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| Hadi el-Abdullah (top right) and some of the injured trapped in Qusayr |
Syria's
army has overrun the strategic border town of Qusayr in Homs province after a
blistering offensive spearheaded by thousands of fighters from Iran’s Shiite Lebanese
Hezbollah movement.
Rebels said they had
pulled out of Qusayr, which lies on a cross-border supply route with
neighboring Lebanon and where they had fought fierce battles with government
forces and Hezbollah guerrillas for some three weeks.
One Hezbollah fighter
told Reuters they took the town in a
rapid overnight offensive.
Hezbollah and Syrian
forces fought hard to seize Qusayr, which had been in rebel hands for over a
year, to reassert control of a corridor through the central province of Homs
which links Damascus to the coastal heartland of President Bashar al-Assad's
minority Alawite Shiites.
Hezbollah supporters in
Beirut's southern suburbs celebrated the fall of Qusayr with gunfire, fireworks
and placards and by handing out sweets and candy to passersby.
Iran, which is Hezbollah’s
overlord and Assad’s key regional ally promptly congratulated Damascus on retaking Qusayr,
according to Iran's Press TV.
A video uploaded to
YouTube today by the Qusayr Media Center headed by citizen journalist Hadi
el-Abdullah shows some of the hundreds of injured trapped in the town,
including a boy with missing limbs.
Some are shown being moved
from makeshift field clinics onto the back of pickup trucks.
Over the weekend the UN
said it was “extremely alarmed” by reports there were as many as 1,500 wounded
people in Qusayr.
Doctors had appealed
for the Red Cross to be allowed in to treat the wounded, but Syrian officials
said this would only be permitted once the rebels had been defeated.
Civilians who had
managed to flee Qusayr described it as "a ghost town, heavily damaged and
filled with the sound of bombs," the UN refugee agency UNHCR said yesterday.
Those who had escaped
were mainly women and children, because men risked being killed at checkpoints,
said spokeswoman Melissa Fleming.
“From the handful of
interviews we have done so far, it appears that a new route for displaced
people has opened up from the Qusayr area towards Arsal in Lebanon, about 100 kilometers
away,” Ms. Fleming noted. She also said that some people flee to Lebanon while others
are displaced internally.
The refugees -- mostly
women and children -- said the difficult journey to the border has to be made
by foot.
“Fighters are said to
be targeting people as they try to flee. No route out of Qusayr is considered
safe, and there are continued reports of between 700 and 1,500 injured
civilians being trapped in Qusayr,” Ms. Fleming said.
“Those we have spoken
to say it is unsafe to flee with men, who are at heightened risk of being
arrested or killed at checkpoints along the way. None of the refugees was able
or willing to identify those who are manning the checkpoints,” the spokesperson
said.
She noted that one
woman had told UNHCR staff that people in Qusayr were faced with a stark
choice, “You leave and risk being killed . . . or you stay and face a
certainty of being killed.”
NO GAME-CHANGER
The fall of Qusayr doesn’t
change the strategic stalemate in Syria, according to Michael Hanna, senior fellow at Century
Foundation think-tank
Speaking to The Guardian, he said:
It
is obviously a big blow, not just tactically but psychologically, for the
rebels. But we have seen these tactical ebbs and flows before ... People have
made far-reaching conclusions that have assumed that these temporary shifts in
momentum signify the beginning of the end for either side. I think that is
simply premature.
There
are still huge swaths of Syrian territory that, I think, are permanently out of
control of central government. There are places in the country that are never
going to be reclaimed. So I think it’s hard to think of a scenario whereby we
can talk about Assad winning. These limitations are going to carry on into the
foreseeable future.
It’s
hard to see how this becomes a model for reclaiming control of the entire
country.
Asked about Hezbollah's
role in the battle, Hanna said:
Clearly
having Hezbollah engaged in an open and dedicated fashion, not only infused new
numbers into the fight, but also well-trained and disciplined fighters.
Obviously they did make a very big difference in Qusayr, as has Iranian
technical, logistical, and planning support.
Hanna was also pessimistic
about the possibility of a diplomatic breakthrough at the Geneva-2 conference.
We
are at a strategic stalemate and this is something that could go on for years.
I imagine there is going to be a political settlement to this war at some
point, but I don’t think that is in the near term ... There is not going to be
any resolution or progress at Geneva, if the talks happen.
