Hezbollah poised for Aleppo assault

Beirut: Thousands of Hezbollah fighters were massed around the northern Syrian city of Aleppo on Sunday, according to rebels and a senior commander in the Lebanese resistance movement, broadening Hezbollah’s backing of President Bashar Al Assad’s forces and stoking fears of an imminent assault on the city.

The commander, who declined to be named because he is not authorised to speak to the media, said there were around 2,000 Hezbollah fighters in Aleppo province, largely stationed in towns north of the city. The Free Syrian Army said Hezbollah forces had gathered in a suburb of the city on Sunday, and appeared to be preparing for an attack.

Rebels have secured swaths of Aleppo — Syria’s commercial capital and most populous city — since fighting engulfed it last summer, but the two sides have been locked in a grinding stalemate for months. An assault on the city could stretch rebel forces, which have sent reinforcements from Aleppo to fight against Hezbollah and Syrian army troops in the battle for the town of Qusayr, near the Lebanese border.

The claims of a Hezbollah presence in Syria’s north follows a pledge by its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, to back Al Assad to victory and indicates that the movement could be used as a guerrilla force wherever required. A longstanding ally of Syria and Iran, its decision to knuckle into the fight raises the spectre of a regional conflagration spilling over Syria’s borders. Underscoring that point, Syrian rebels and Hezbollah fighters engaged in their first serious clashes on Lebanese soil on Sunday.

“The Aleppo battle has started on a very small scale, we’ve only just entered the game,” said the commander in an interview in Beirut on Saturday while on leave from fighting in Qusayr where he oversees five units. “We are going to go after strongholds where they think they are safe. They are going to fall like dominoes.”

He said that the Hezbollah fighters were largely concentrated around the towns of Zahra and Nubol, which have been under siege from rebel forces. A spokesman for Hezbollah said he could not confirm or deny the presence of the group’s forces around Aleppo.

Louay Al Mekdad, political and media coordinator for the Free Syrian Army, said Hezbollah fighters had gathered at a military academy in Aleppo’s western district of Hamdaniya on Sunday. He put the number of the resistance group’s soldiers in the area at 4,000, citing rebel intelligence.

“We think they are going to engage inside Aleppo and the province,” he said.

In what appeared to preparation for that, pro-government forces began a push to secure supply lines to the city on Sunday, activists said. Aleppo-based activist Kareem Abeed said that pro-government forces had advanced from the military academy in Hamdaniya, with rebels repelling an attack in the neighborhood of Rashideen.

The infiltration of Hezbollah fighters into Syria — along with the supply of weapons from Russia and Iran — has helped turn the tide of the war in favour of the government of President Bashar Al Assad, US senator and former presidential candidate John McCain said on Sunday.

“We are seeing, unfortunately, a battlefield situation where Bashar Al Assad now has the upper hand, and it’s tragic,” McCain, who slipped into Syria last week to meet with rebel fighters, said on CBS’s Face the Nation.

McCain, who has repeatedly called for military action in Syria and who has been among the harshest critics of the Obama administration on the issue, recalled claims from US officials dating back more than year ago that Al Assad’s fall was inevitable.

“I think we can’t make that statement today,” he said. “Hezbollah [has] now invaded. The Iranians are there. Russia is pouring weapons in. And anybody that believes that Bashar Al Assad is going to go to a conference in Geneva when he is prevailing on the battlefield — it’s just ludicrous to assume that.”

McCain was referring to an international conference planned for later this month or possibly July to bring the warring sides together. The Syrian opposition has said it will not attend while Hezbollah’s siege on Qusayr continues.

It showed no sign of let-up Sunday, as Syrian foreign minister Waleed Al Mu’allem rejected a request from the United Nations to allow the International Committee of the Red Cross to enter the town immediately and tend to an estimated 1,500 wounded stuck inside.

The Hezbollah commander boasted about gains in Qusayr, saying that when he left the battlefield for leave a week ago, the movement controlled 70 per cent of the city at the cost of 72 of its men. He said there are 3,000 Hezbollah fighters in the town, among “no more than 10,000” in the whole of Syria.

However, Sami Al Rifaie, an activist based in Qusayr, said rebels have made gains since reinforcements arrived, with Hezbollah and army control reduced to just 20 per cent of the city.

Liwa Al Tawhid Brigade, one of the largest opposition groups in the area, has sent men from Aleppo to back up embattled rebel forces in Qusayr.

In a sign that Hezbollah may be under more strain that expected, the commander said that seven days on, seven days off military rotations have been changed to 20 days on before a week-long leave.

Justifying Hezbollah’s involvement in the Syrian conflict, its leader Nasrallah has painted the opposition as extremists backed by the United States and Israel. He has warned they will eventually invade Lebanon if they are not put down across the border.

But even after announcing all-out backing, Hezbollah fighters had been largely confined in Qusayr and in Damascus suburbs around the Shiite shrine of Sayyida Zaynab, which it has pledged to protect.

In a video posted online Saturday, a battalion of the Liwa Al Tawhid Brigade declared it was leaving for Zahra and Nubol to fight the “party of the devil,” a term often used by rebels to refer to Hezbollah, which translates as Party of God.

If Hezbollah is present in Aleppo, it is plausible it could be utilised anywhere in the country, said Emile Hokayem, a Middle East-based analyst at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

“A deployment so deep into Syria and in such a crucial place would be a clear indication that Hezbollah’s role in Syria was never limited to defensive aims but is geared toward helping Al Assad score major victories,” he said.

Hezbollah’s entanglement in Syria has already sparked a backlash within Lebanon, with rebels firing rockets from across the border with increasing frequency in recent weeks.

On Sunday, one member of Hezbollah and at least 12 rebels were killed in clashes in Ain Al Jaouze, a finger of Lebanese territory which juts into Syria, near Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley town of Baalbek, according to Lebanese security sources cited by Reuters. The men may have been ambushed by Hezbollah as they tried to fire rockets into the Bekaa Valley, they said.

“The presence of Hezbollah units around Aleppo will only deepen the divide in Lebanon and confirm, in the eyes of its rivals, Hezbollah’s complete alignment with Al Assad,” Hokayem said.