A Syrian government assault on the rebel bastion of Qusayr raged into a second day Monday, with at least 28 members of Lebanon’s Shiite group Hezbollah reported killed as they fought alongside the army.
As official media reported that the army was consolidating its grip on Qusayr, a strategic prize in the two-year conflict, the ruler of Qatar, which backs the rebellion, slammed international inaction on Syria.
The battle for Qusayr began on Sunday, when government troops backed by Hezbollah stormed the western town, casting a shadow over US-Russian efforts to organise a peace conference on Syria.
By Monday, the fighting was focused on the east of the town, while thousands of civilians were trapped inside, activists said.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the fighting had left at least 56 rebels dead, six of them on Monday, and four civilians including one woman.
It also said that “28 members of Hezbollah’s elite forces were killed and more than 70 others wounded in clashes in the town of Qusayr yesterday,” Sunday.
A source close Hezbollah told AFP at least 20 members had been killed in Syria.
The official SANA news agency reported on Monday that Syrian troops “are restoring order and security to the eastern part of Qusayr, eliminating terrorists (the regime term for rebels), destroying their dens and defusing bombs near the centre of the town”.
An activist on the ground also said there were intense battles in eastern Qusayr but he denied that the army had advanced as far as it claimed.
“The army has failed to secure any definitive advance so far. The battles are focused on the east now, where the regime still had a foothold. Now Hezbollah and regime forces are using that foothold to try and break in,” Hadi al-Abdallah told AFP via the Internet.
He also reported that at least 25,000 civilians are trapped in the town.
“People are sleeping in warehouses and other underground structures. They have no way of getting out. Trying to get out of Qusayr is a suicide operation,” said Abdallah.
“Water is cut off, and we haven’t had electricity for four months.”
Abdallah described the latest assault as one of the fiercest since the uprising against the regime of President Bashar al-Assad erupted in March 2011.
“Yesterday was the most violent, most difficult day in the whole of the Syrian revolution.”
Qusayr is considered strategically important because it sits between Damascus and the coast and is near the Lebanese border.
Violence has frequently spilled over from Syria into Lebanon, where the population is divided over the conflict.
On Monday, a Lebanese soldier was killed in the northern city of Tripoli, as the army tried to put an end to sectarian clashes pitting Sunnis who support the Syrian revolt and Alawites who back Assad.
In Doha, the Qatari emir, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, lashed out against the international community.
“It is no longer acceptable that influential states in the international community do not act to end the horrific tragedy and escalating humanitarian catastrophe,” Sheikh Hamad said.
He also lamented the “failure of all international and Arab initiatives to get the Syrian regime to listen to the sound of reason”.
His remarks came amid mounting condemnation of the assault on Qusayr.
Syria’s umbrella opposition National Coalition, warning that “a civilian massacre will soon take place”, urged the Arab League to convene an emergency meeting of Arab foreign ministers and take measures “to protect Qusayr”.
UAE Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed al-Nahayan called for “the repressive machine in Damascus” to be stopped, while the French foreign ministry urged “all the players in a position to avoid a new massacre of the Syrian civilian population to mobilise without delay”.
Foreign ministers of the so-called Friends of Syria group of nations are due to meet on Wednesday in Jordan, ahead of a planned Syria peace conference which Washington and Russia are hoping to organise.
Branches of the divided opposition met in Madrid on Monday seeking to harmonise their approach, their Spanish government hosts said.
On the humanitarian front, aid organisation Oxfam warned that as the hot Middle East summer approaches health risks could increase for hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees in Jordan and Lebanon.
The UN says that more than 1.5 million Syrians have fled the conflict and estimates that more than 70,000 people have been killed since March 2011.
The Observatory has a higher toll of around 94,000 killed.
Hezbollah fighters killed in battle for Syria's Qusayr
