ANSD : Regime pounds Deraa with barrel bombs

SAT 23 - 11 - 2024

Date: Jun 26, 2018
Source: The Daily Star

Regime pounds Deraa with barrel bombs

_{Gemma Fox| The Daily Star}
BEIRUT: Syrian warplanes dropped barrel bombs on Deraa city Monday as the regime pushed deeper into the country’s southwest, in an offensive rebels say was green-lighted by the United States. Government forces struck the city with barrel bombs and over 55 air-to-surface missiles in the early hours of Monday, before Russian warplanes began targeting the city later in the afternoon, Deraa-based opposition activist Riyad al-Zein and the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights told The Daily Star.

It is the first instance this year of the city being hit with barrel bombs, although the town of Hirak, in Deraa province, was struck last week.

Hirak and the village of Busr al-Harir were also pounded with dozens of airstrikes, the sources said.

Regime forces, supported by Iranian-backed fighters on the ground and Russian airpower, have been advancing through the center of the opposition-held southwest toward Deraa, where they are now engaged in fierce clashes with rebel fighters who still hold much of the city’s southern and eastern districts.

If the city is secured, it would split the opposition-held territory and give the forces of President Bashar Assad a key base to propel the offensive eastward and retake the strategic Nassib crossing with Jordan, the closure of which has impacted both countries’ economies.

Syrian state media SANA reported that over 130 square kilometers of Deraa and Swaida provinces had been “liberated.” The Hezbollah War Media Center also said the regime was now in control of most of the villages in the Lajat region and had successfully driven out “terrorist” fighters there. The rocky area in northeastern Deraa has seen some of the most intense bombardment since the offensive began.

Abu Bakr al-Hasan, spokesman for the rebel group Jaish al-Thawra, which fights under the banner of the Free Syrian Army in the southwest, denied the reports and said fighting was still ongoing. The regime, Hasan said, had been turning its attention to Busr al-Harir after incurring losses during its attempt to retake Lajat.

Dozens of families continued to flee the fighting, heading south toward the border despite Jordanian officials warning that they will not take in any more Syrian refugees.

Suleiman al-Qarfan, director-general of civil affairs in Deraa and Qunaitra, said while some had found shelter in disused buildings, most of the displaced families he saw during his visit to the city of Nawa and the town of Tafas Monday were sleeping out in the open. “The situation is extremely bad,” he said. “People tell me they are afraid of the snakes and the scorpions out in the open.”

This follows reports that the U.S. told opposition forces in the southwest that they would not intervene in their defense. “It seems there was an agreement between Russia and the U.S.,” Hassan said. “This [statement] changed the equation of the battle.”

Analysts, however, cautioned against reports that this reflected a dramatic change in U.S. policy.

“This is less a shift in policy and more just an honest articulation of their position,” the Crisis Group’s Sam Heller said.

But the U.S. will still need to contend with Jordan not wanting a full-scale offensive that causes thousands more Syrians to head to the border, Nawar Oliver from the Istanbul-based Omran Center said.

“Americans seem to have decided not to commit fully and energetically to negotiations to the southwest, however, which might limit the scope of what can be achieved politically,” Heller said.

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