Regime forces buoyed by a key victory against rebels were preparing Sunday to launch an offensive aimed at expelling rebels from Aleppo in northern Syria, a security source said.
With the conflict spilling over Syria’s borders, one man was killed at a demonstration outside the Iranian embassy in Beirut against the Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah.
“It is likely the battle for Aleppo will start in the coming hours or days, and its aim is to reclaim the towns and villages in the province,” the Syrian security source told AFP.
“The Syrian Arab army is ready to carry out its mission in this province,” the source added, on condition of anonymity.
On the international front, Britain said that Syrian government gains on the ground had made organising peace talks harder, as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Russian President Vladimir Putin discussed Syria’s conflict by telephone.
The announcement of a potential new offensive comes five days after the army bolstered by the Iran-backed Hezbollah seized Qusayr in central-west Syria, a year after the strategic region fell into rebel hands.
Analysts say its success in Qusayr just 10 kilometres (six miles) from Syria’s border with Lebanon has given the army the confidence to try to suppress the insurgency elsewhere in the strife-torn country.
Pro-regime daily Al-Watan said the army has “started to deploy at a large scale in Aleppo province, in preparation for a battle that will be fought in the city and its outskirts”.
Rebels last July launched a massive assault on Aleppo, once Syria’s commercial hub. The city has since suffered daily regime bombardment and clashes.
Al-Watan also said “the Syrian army will take advantage of its experience in Qusayr and Eastern Ghouta (near Damascus) to advance in the (central) province of Hama and Homs” nearby.
An army siege of rebel-held areas of Homs entered its second year on Sunday.
“The consequences of the battle for Qusayr will… map out the contours of Syria’s political future,” Al-Watan added.
In Beirut, a young man injured in a clash outside the Iranian embassy between supporters and opponents of Hezbollah died of his wounds, a Lebanese army spokesman told AFP.
“A civilian was critically injured and has since died.”
Around 100 people also staged an anti-Hezbollah protest in central Beirut amid a heavy security presence, an AFP journalist said.
Also in Lebanon, the Red Cross said dozens of people wounded in Qusayr have been brought across the border for treatment.
“Eighty-seven wounded Syrians were transported by the Lebanese Red Cross from Friday afternoon to Sunday morning to hospitals in Bekaa (east) and to north” in Lebanon, said Georges Kettane, operations director of the LRC.
Security sources in Lebanon said dozens of wounded — both rebels and civilians — have made their way independently across the frontier to seek medical treatment.
British Foreign Secretary William Hague, meanwhile, said that Syrian regime gains made it harder to organise a US-Russian proposed peace conference and to make it a success.
“The regime has gained ground on the ground, again at the cost of huge loss of life and the indiscriminate use of violence against the civilian population,” he told BBC television.
“That makes the Geneva conference harder to bring about and to make a success. It makes it less likely that the regime will make enough concessions in such negotiations, and it makes it harder to get the opposition to come to the negotiations.”
Syria’s main opposition coalition on Saturday said it refused to join in the peace talks dubbed Geneva 2.
“What is happening in Syria today completely closes the doors on any discussions about international conferences and political initiatives,” George Sabra, interim head of the National Coalition, told a press conference in Istanbul.
In Jerusalem, the premier’s office said Netanyahu had spoken to Putin after Russia offered to bolster the beleaguered UN peacekeeping force monitoring the Israeli-Syrian ceasefire line on the Golan.
“We discussed issues linked to Syria where the situation is becoming more complex by the day,” Netanyahu said.
“We saw only last week the battles which took place next to our border on the Golan,” he said after Syrian rebels clashed with Assad forces for control of Quneitra in the demilitarised zone between Syria and Israel.
Thursday’s clashes, in which two UN peacekeepers were lightly wounded, prompted Austria to announce it would withdraw its 377 troops from the UN Disengagement Observer Force headquartered there.
On Sunday, the Syria conflict also spilled over into Iraq, where a guard was killed and two were wounded in clashes with Syrian rebels near a border crossing.
More than 94,000 people have been killed and some 1.6 million Syrians have fled the country since March 2011 after Assad cracked down on pro-democracy protests, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights estimates.
Syrian forces ready new offensive after Qusayr victory
