In this photo, which AP obtained from Syrian official news agency SANA and which has been authenticated based on its contents and other AP reporting, President Bashar Assad gestures as he speaks during an interview with Lebanon’s Al-Mayadeen TV, at the presidential palace in Damascus, Syria, Monday, Oct. 21, 2013. Syria’s president said Monday that the factors that would allow a landmark conference aimed at ending the country’s civil war do not yet exist, throwing further doubt on international efforts to hold peace talks that have already been repeatedly delayed. (AP Photo/SANA)
BEIRUT (AP) — Syrian government forces battled Tuesday with al-Qaida-linked rebels trying to capture an ancient Christian town north of Damascus, activists and the state media said.
The Jabhat al-Nusra, or Nusra Front, appear to have targeted Sadad because of its strategic location near the main highway north of Damascus, rather than because it is Christian. But hard-liners among the rebels are hostile to the minority group, who tend to support the government of President Bashar Assad, and other al-Qaida-linked fighters have damaged and desecrated churches in areas they have seized.
The assault on Sadad, some 95 kilometers (60 miles) north of Damascus, began at dawn Monday, said the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Local police fought back the initial assault and were reinforced by the army.
The rebel attack seemed to target a chief hospital in the town, said the Observatory, which monitors fighting through a network of activists on the ground. He said that there was also fighting in the nearby town of Muhin and that the Nusra Front controlled the main road leading to Damascus.
President Bashar Assad has drawn support from Syria's patchwork of ethnic and religious minorities, including Christians and members of his Alawite sect, a Shiite offshoot, in the country's civil war, now in its third year. The rebels are dominated by Syria's Sunni Muslim majority.
Al-Qaida-linked militant groups such as the Nusra Front and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant are among the most active rebel factions in Syria. They have fought other rebel brigades to seize strategic border areas, and are also battling Kurdish fighters in northern Syria.
Also Tuesday, mortar rounds slammed into a pro-government suburb on the outskirts of Damascus, killing at least two people, said the state SANA news agency and Abdurrahman.
It wasn't immediately clear who was behind the shelling but rebels have previously targeted Jaramana, home to Christians and the Druse religious group. It is close to another suburb, Mleiha, where fighting between rebels and government forces has been raging for days.
Meanwhile, international inspectors tasked by the U.N. to destroy Syria's chemical weapons capability said they had visited 17 sites since they began their work at the beginning of October. In a statement issued late Monday, they said they had destroyed "critical equipment to make the facilities inoperable."
- Politics & Government
- Unrest, Conflicts & War
- Damascus
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