Obama refuses to specify US aid to rebels

Berlin/Beirut: US President Barack Obama on Wednesday refused to specify the exact nature of new US military aid to Syrian rebels, despite signals from top US officials that they will be get small arms and ammunition.

“I cannot and will not comment on specifics on our programmes related to the Syrian opposition,” Obama said at a press conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Obama has refused to publicly specify exactly how Washington will increase aid to the Syrian opposition, after his government said it would offer military support for the first time after determining President Bashar Al Assad had used chemical weapons.

Previously Obama had warned against pouring more weapons into the conflict and had kept US aid limited to humanitarian and non-lethal supplies.

The US president also said in Berlin that reports in the United States that escalating American support to the rebels meant the White House was now on a slippery slope to a new Middle East entanglement were mistaken.

He said reports were “overcranked” when suggesting the US was heading into a new Middle Eastern war.

Meanwhile, Syrian troops backed by Lebanese Hezbollah fighters clashed Wednesday with rebel forces south of a Damascus suburb that is home to a major Shiite shrine in an attempt to secure the area surrounding the revered site, activists said.

State TV said its forces was able to clear rebels out of one neighbourhood, Al Bahdaliya. Meanwhile, rebel forces claimed they took control of a hospital in a village south of the shrine neighbourhood, from which they were battling regime forces and allied militias.

Opposition fighters control several suburbs of the capital, trying to threaten the heart of the city, seat of Al Assad’s power. But the regime has largely been able to keep them at bay.

The area Al Bahdaliya, about 16 kilometres south of Damascus, has seen fighting before. But the regime forces and Shiite Hezbollah fighters launched an intensified assault there on Monday, according to Rami Abdul Rahman, the director of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

The assault appears aimed at decisively pushing rebels back and securing the suburb of the shrine, said Abdul Rahman. The Observatory is a Britain-based group of anti-regime activists that has a network of activists on the ground.

Before the war, Shiites from outside Syria regularly visited the shrine. Last year, rebels kidnapped Iranian pilgrims visiting the area, accusing them of being spies.

Now protection of the shrine has become a rallying cry for Shiite fighters backing Al Assad. Lebanese fighterd from Hezbollah as well as Iraqi Shiite militiamen have been reported fighting in the area in the past weeks, though it was not clear of Iraqis were involved in the new assault.

US officials estimate that there are 5,000 Hezbollah militiamen fighting alongside the regime” while thousands of Sunni foreign fighters are also believed to be in Syria, including members of Jabhat Al Nusra, an Al Qaida affiliate that is believed to be among the most effective rebel factions in Syria.

Hezbollah fighters were instrumental in a recent victory for the regime forces, regaining control of a strategic town in the central Homs province after more than a year in rebel hands.

Buoyed by that victory, regime forces have been on an offensive to dislodge rebel fighters from areas they hold in Damascus, as well as the country’s heartland in Homs province.

Also on Wednesday, state TV said an explosion at a military depot outside Syria’s coastal city of Latakia left six people lightly injured.

State TV said a “technical error” caused the explosion at a base used by the army corps of engineers. The Britain-based Observatory said it did not know the cause of the explosion in what it described as an ammunition warehouse. It said 13 people were injured, including some in critical condition.