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| Syrian army soldier prisoners stand near ammunition after Syrian fighters took over the military base in Aleppo, Monday, Nov. 19, 2012. |
BASE OF THE 46TH REGIMENT, Syria (AP) -- After a nearly two-month siege, Syrian rebels overwhelmed a large military base in the north of the country and made off with tanks, armored vehicles and truckloads of munitions that rebel leaders say will give them a boost in the fight against President Bashar Assad's army.
The rebel capture of the
base of the Syrian army's 46th Regiment is a sharp blow to the
government's efforts to roll back rebels gains and shows a rising level
of organization among opposition forces.
More important than the base's fall, however, are the weapons the rebels found inside.
At
a rebel base where the much of the haul was taken after the weekend
victory, rebel fighters unloaded half a dozen large trucks piled high
with green boxes full of mortars, artillery shells, rockets and rifles
taken from the base. Parked nearby were five tanks, two armored
vehicles, two rocket launchers and two heavy-caliber artillery cannons.
Around
20 Syrian soldiers captured in the battle were put to work carrying
munitions boxes, barefoot and stripped to the waist. Rebels refused to
let reporters talk to them or see where they were being held.
"There
has never been a battle before with this much booty," said Gen. Ahmad
al-Faj of the rebels Joint Command, a grouping of rebel brigades that
was involved in the siege. Speaking on Monday at the rebel base, set up
in a former customs office at Syria's Bab al-Hawa border crossing with
Turkey, he said the haul would be distributed among the brigades.
For
months, Syria's rebels have gradually been destroying government
checkpoints and taking over towns in the northern provinces of Idlib and
Aleppo along the Turkish border.
Rebel
fighters say that weapons seized in such battles have been essential to
their transformation from ragtag brigades into forces capable of
challenging Assad's professional army. Cross-border arms smuggling from
Turkey and Iraq has also played a role, although the most common
complaint among rebel fighters is that they lack ammunition and heavy
weapons, munitions and anti-aircraft weapons to fight Assad's air force.
It
is unclear how many government bases the rebels have overrun during the
20-month conflict, mostly because they rarely try to hold captured
facilities. Staying in the captured bases would make them sitting ducks
for regime airstrikes.
"Their strategy is to
hit and run," said Elias Hanna, a retired Lebanese army general and
Beirut-based strategic analyst. "They're trying to hurt the regime where
it hurts by bisecting and compartmentalizing Syria in order to dilute
the regime's power."
The 46th Regiment was a
major pillar of the government's force near the northern city of Aleppo,
Syria's economic hub, and its fall cuts a major supply line to the
regime's army, Hanna said. Government forces have been battling rebels
for months over control of Aleppo.
"It's a tactical turning point that may lead to a strategic shift," he said.
At
the 46th Regiment's base, about 25 kilometers (15 miles) west of
Aleppo, the main three-story command building showed signs of the battle
- its walls punctured apparently from rebel rocket attacks. The smaller
barracks buildings scattered around the compound, about 2.6 square
kilometers (1 square mile) in size, had been looted, with mattresses
overturned. A number of buildings had been torched.
Reporters
from The Associated Press who visited the base late Monday saw no trace
of the government troops who had been defending it - other than the
dead bodies of seven soldiers.
Two of them, in
camouflage uniforms, lay outside the command building. One of them was
missing his head, apparently blown off in an explosion.
The
rest were in a nearby clinic. Four dead soldiers were on stretchers set
on the floor, one with a large gash in his arm, another with what
appeared to be a large shrapnel hole in the back of his head. The last
lay on a gurney in another room, his arms and legs bandaged, a bullet
hole in his cheek and a splatter of blood on the wall and ceiling behind
him as if he had been shot where he lay.
It could not be determined how or when the soldiers had been killed.
The
final assault that took the base came after more than 50 days of siege
that left the soldiers inside demoralized, according to fighters who
took part.
Working together and communicating
by radio, a number of different rebels groups divided up the area
surrounding the base and each cut the regime's supply lines, said
Abdullah Qadi, a rebel field commander.
Over the course of the siege,
dozens of soldiers defected, some telling the rebels that those inside
were short of food, Qadi said.
The rebels
decided to attack Saturday afternoon when they felt the soldiers inside
were weak and the rebels had enough ammunition to finish the battle,
Qadi said. The battle was over by nightfall on Sunday. Seven rebel
fighters were killed in the battle, said al-Faj of the rebels' Joint
Command. Other rebel leaders gave similar numbers.
It remains unclear how many soldiers remained in the base when the rebels launched their attack and what happened to them.
Al-Faj
said all soldiers inside were either killed or captured. He said he
didn't know how many were killed, but that the rebels had taken about 50
prisoners, all of whom would be tried in a rebel court. Aside from the
20 prisoners seen at the rebel's Bab al-Hawa base, the AP was unable to
see any other captured soldiers.
The Syrian
government does not respond to requests for comment on military affairs
and said nothing about the base's capture. It says the rebels are
terrorists backed by foreign powers that seek to destroy the country.
Disorganization
has plagued the Syrian opposition since the start of the anti-Assad
uprising in March 2011, with exile groups pleading for international
help even when they have no control over those fighting inside of Syria.
A
newly formed Syrian opposition coalition received a boost Tuesday, when
Britain officially recognized it as the sole representative of the
Syrian people.
The National Coalition of the
Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces was formed in the Gulf nation
of Qatar on Oct. 11 under pressure from the United States for a
stronger, more united opposition body to serve as a counterweight to
more extremist forces.
British Foreign
Secretary William Hague said Tuesday the body's members gave assurances
to be a "moderate political force committed to democracy" and that the
West must "support them and deny space to extremist groups."
The United States and the European Union have both spoken well of the body but stopped short of offering it full recognition.
Key
to the body's success will be its ability to build ties with the
disparate rebel groups fighting inside Syria. Many rebel leaders say
they don't recognize the new body, and a group of extremist Islamist
factions on Monday rejected it, announcing that they had formed an
"Islamic state" in Aleppo.
Anti-regime activists say nearly 40,000 people have been killed since Syria's crisis started 20 months ago.
