BEIRUT: The Syrian army has recaptured most of the northern rebel stronghold of Idlib, pushing hundreds of military defectors out of a major base they had held for months, even as pockets of resistance kept up their fight Tuesday.
 
The three-day operation to capture the city came as Syria’s President Bashar Assad formally responded to proposals made by U.N.-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan to end the country’s conflict, a spokesman for Annan said.
 
“They did respond. Their responses are being considered. We have no other comment for now,” spokesman Ahmad Fawzi told AFP.
 
Annan had said earlier he was expecting answers from Syria by Tuesday to his “concrete” proposals after leaving Damascus Sunday without reaching an agreement. The international envoy is expected to make a statement Wednesday in Geneva.
 
The former U.N. chief also said he had a “useful meeting” with six representatives of the opposition Syrian National Council, headed by Burhan Ghalioun, whom he said had “promised their full cooperation.”
 
The Idlib offensive followed closely after a similar offensive to dislodge the opposition from another key area it had controlled, the Baba Amr district in central Homs.
 
The two victories gave Assad’s regime unmistakable momentum as it tries to crush armed opposition fighters.
 
A pledge Tuesday from Syria’s staunch ally Russia that Moscow will continue selling weapons to the regime was yet another boost. Still, international pressure is more intense than ever, with the U.S. considering military options.
 
The Arab League chief said Tuesday the regime’s killing of civilians amounts to crimes against humanity and he called for an international inquiry.
 
Activists reported fresh violence in central province of Hama near Homs, the suburbs of Damascus and elsewhere, killing dozens.
 
New York-based Human Rights Watch said troops have planted land mines near its borders with Turkey and Lebanon along routes used by people fleeing the violence and trying to reach safety in neighboring countries. HRW said its report was based on accounts from witnesses and Syrian deminers and that the land mines have already caused civilian casualties.
 
“Any use of anti-personnel land mines is unconscionable,” said Steve Goose of HRW. “There is absolutely no justification for the use of these indiscriminate weapons by any country, anywhere, for any purpose.”
 
In November, a Syrian official and witnesses told the Associated Press that Syria planted land mines along parts of its border with Lebanon.
 
The official claimed at the time that the mines aimed to prevent arms smuggling between the countries.
 
HRW quoted a former Syrian army deminer as saying that in early February he visited the border town of Hasanieih and found land mines planted between fruit trees in two parallel lines, each approximately 500 meters long.
 
HRW also quoted a resident of the border town of Kherbet al-Joz as saying that for 20 days, until March 1, he saw some 50 soldiers accompanied by two large military vehicles installing land mines starting from Kherbet Al-Joz toward two other villages. Both Kherbet al-Joz and Hasanieih border Turkey in the north.
 
Assad’s forces launched the siege on the Idlib three days ago. The city largely had been under control of hundreds of fighters for the rebel Free Syrian Army.
 
The pro-government Al-Watan daily and the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said government troops were in control of Idlib Tuesday. The Observatory said the army was still facing some resistance pockets in three Idlib areas, including the central neighborhoods of Dubait and Bustan Ghanoum.
 
Idlib, a predominantly Sunni city of some 150,000 people located about 160 kilometers north of Homs, was among the first to fall in the hands of army defectors last summer. Rebels were in control of a large parts of the city in the past months with troops present in some areas.
 
Calls to the area were not going through, making it difficult to confirm the events of the past few days. But witnesses have said this week that army defectors in the city have been running out of ammunition.
 
Many feared the offensive in Idlib could end up like the regime’s campaign against Baba Amr. Troops besieged and shelled Baba Amr for almost a month before capturing it on March 1, after hundreds of civilians were killed. Activists accused the regime of atrocities after the military captured Baba Amr.
 
The Free Syrian Army, made up of army defectors and protesters who have taken up weapons, has been dealt two major defeats. But the conflict is far from over. The FSA has appealed for outside help in getting weapons to help the group put up a fight.
 
An influx of weapons could transform the conflict. Saudi Arabia and Qatar have been discussing military aid, but the U.S. and others have not advocated arming the rebels, in part out of fear it would create an even more bloody and prolonged battle. Syria has a complex web of allegiances in the region that extend to Iran and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, raising fears of wider violence.
 
But Damascus can be sure of a steady supply of arms from Russia. Russian Deputy Defense Minister Anatoly Antonov said Tuesday Russia will abide by existing contracts to deliver weapons to Syria despite Assad’s crackdown.
 
Russia has vetoed two U.N. Security Council resolutions condemning the violence in Syria, saying they were unbalanced, and Tuesday Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov reiterated that position, saying Syrian government forces will not stop fighting or withdraw from positions unless rebel forces instantly mirror their move.
 
“This must be simultaneous,” Lavrov told reporters in Moscow, after he held private talks with United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at the United Nations Monday.
 
“There must not be a situation where it is demanded that the government leave cities and towns and the same is not demanded of armed groups.”
 
Arab League chief Nabil Elaraby said it would not be ethical or moral to allow those behind the killings in the cities of Homs and Idlib to get away with their crimes. “There must be an impartial international inquiry into what is happening to uncover those responsible for these crimes to face justice,” he said in Cairo.
 
In northern Syria, the Observatory and another activist group, the Local Coordination Committees, reported intense clashes between government troops and rebels in the town of Maaret al-Numan, in Idlib province, Sunday night.
 
The U.N. refugee agency said 230,000 Syrians have fled their homes since the uprising against Assad’s regime began last year. The U.N. says more than 7,500 people have been killed in the past 12 months.
 
Panos Moumtzis, the UNHCR’s coordinator for Syria said 30,000 people have already fled to Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan and “on a daily basis hundreds of people are still crossing into neighboring countries.”
 
Moumtzis said at least 200,000 people were also displaced within the country, according to the Syrian Arab Red Crescent.
 
Assad has made a series of gestures toward reform to try to allay the crisis, but his opponents say his efforts are too little, too late.
 
Assad Tuesday set nationwide parliamentary elections for May 7.
 
The vote was initially to take place in March but was postponed after last month’s referendum on the country’s new constitution that allowed new political parties to run. They would be the third such polls since Assad came to power in 2000, but the first under a multiparty system as authorized under the new charter.
 
U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland dismissed the vote as meaningless. “Parliamentary elections for a rubber-stamp parliament in the middle of the kind of violence that we’re seeing across the country is ridiculous,” she said.
 
Meanwhile, CIA chief David Petraeus met Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan Tuesday for closed-door talks focusing on the crisis across the border in Syria.
 
Petraeus met with Erdogan and Turkish National Intelligence Organization chief Hakan Fidan and “discussed areas of mutual concern, including regional security issues and counterterrorism cooperation,” according to U.S. Embassy spokesman T.J. Grubisha.
 
Erdogan has been fiercely critical of the Syrian regime’s year-long crackdown on the opposition and has called on President Bashar al-Assad to quit.
 
The talks were not part of Erdogan’s official itinerary. The premier’s office declined to comment on the report.
 
Separately Tuesday, Tunisia’s Prime Minister Hamadi Jebali said Assad would not be welcome in his country, after the Tunisian president offered the Syrian leader asylum in Tunis.
 
“I respect our head of state but I do not want to see Assad in our country. And if I were to encounter him, I would put him in front of a court and hand him over to the Syrian people,” Jebali told the website of German news weekly Der Spiegel.
 
Tunisia’s President Moncef Marzouki reiterated the North African country would be prepared to grant Assad refuge if it helped bring peace to Syria after nearly a year of violence.
 
“If we want to stop the killing, the only way is to have a solution like the Yemeni solution: that the president leaves power and that he has safe haven, somewhere to go,” Marzouki told BBC World News last week.
 
Jebali, who was due to visit German Chancellor Angela Merkel Wednesday, also said in his interview that outside military intervention would be “pure madness.”
 
“It would pour more oil onto the fire and give Assad the excuse, which he is urgently seeking, to deploy his military even more forcefully,” he said, in remarks published in German.
 
Nevertheless, he stressed: “We cannot and will not accept that a regime is systematically murdering its people ... whoever continues to deliver weapons to the Assad regime is helping the killing of the Syrian people.”