DEVELOPMENTS
— A day after France announced that French laboratory tests had confirmed that sarin gas was used “multiple times” in Syria “in a localized way,” Britain on Wednesday repeated an earlier assessment that “a growing body of limited but persuasive information” pointed to the use of the same toxin.
— U.S. officials insist they still lack incontrovertible proof that Syrian President Bashar Assad ordered the use of chemical weapons. At NATO headquarters on Wednesday, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said he’d not seen the new French evidence.
— In a sign of the growing fears of a regional spillover, Jordanian officials on Wednesday said the U.S. will send anti-missile batteries and fighter jets to Jordan at the kingdom’s request to boost defense capabilities in the face of an attack from Syria.
— In a bid to keep European Union citizens from going to fight in Syria, the bloc’s anti-terror chief said Wednesday he wants member nations to be more aggressive in vetting extremist social media and keep more personal data on suspicious travel.
— News services
Syrian troops and their Lebanese Hezbollah allies captured a strategic border town Wednesday after a grueling three-week battle, dealing a severe blow to rebels and opening the door for President Bashar Assad’s regime to seize back the country’s central heartland.
The regime triumph in Qusair, which Assad’s forces had bombarded for months without success, demonstrates the potentially game-changing role of Hezbollah in Syria’s civil war. The gain could also embolden Assad to push for all-out military victory rather than participate in peace talks being promoted by the United States and Russia.
The Shiite militant group lost dozens of fighters in the battle for Qusair, underlining its commitment in support of Assad’s regime and edging the fight in Syria further into a regional sectarian conflict pitting the Middle East’s Iranian-backed Shiite axis against Sunnis.
Most of the armed rebels in Syria are members of the country’s Sunni Muslim majority, while Assad has retained core support among the country’s minorities, including his own Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam, along with Christians and Shiite Muslims.
The overt involvement by Hezbollah, which is heavily invested in the survival of the Damascus regime, has raised tensions considerably in Lebanon, where the militants have come under harsh criticism.
The group openly celebrated Qusair’s fall Wednesday.
In the predominantly Shiite northeastern town of Bazzalieh, near the Lebanese city of Baalbek, Hezbollah supporters set up a check point, distributing sweets to people and firing in the air in celebration. “Today, we defeated the other Israel,” declared Ali al-Bazzal, 23, waving a yellow Hezbollah flag.
In Hezbollah strongholds in southern Beirut, sounds of celebratory gunfire and fireworks rang out for two hours. “Qusair has fallen,” read banners hung in the streets.
Both sides had dug in for an all-out battle for Qusair, a key crossroads town of supply lines between Damascus and western and northern Syria that had been under rebel control since early last year.
Over the past two months, the Syrian army has moved steadily against rebels in key battleground areas, making advances near the border with Lebanon and considerably lowering the threat to Damascus, the seat of Assad’s government.
Qusair’s fall could boost the momentum for Syrian troops in rolling back rebel gains in other parts of central Homs province, as well as in northern Syria, where the sides have been locked in a stalemate for months. Pro-regime media outlets have said government forces are preparing to move to recapture the contested northern city of Aleppo next.
The blow to the rebel movement — compounded by deepening divisions in opposition ranks — was likely to further discourage it from entering peace negotiations with the regime, which the United States and Russia have been trying to put together in Geneva.
Assad’s regime has agreed in principle to attend, but the opposition has balked, saying it won’t participate while “massacres are taking place.”
In Geneva on Wednesday, U.N.-Arab League envoy Lakhdar Brahimi acknowledged a conference was unlikely before July, adding that “it is embarrassing for us that we are not capable of holding this conference already.”
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