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Syrian Forces Claim Victory in Battle for Strategic Town Syrian Forces Claim Victory in Battle for Strategic Town
(about 3 hours later)
BEIRUT, Lebanon — Syrian government forces and their allies in Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant group, seized most of the strategic crossroads town of Qusayr early on Wednesday, a painful defeat for outgunned Syria rebels and an advance for President Bashar al-Assad. If it sticks, the military gain could infuse his forces with momentum and embolden him to push for military victory just as Russia and the United States are pressing the combatants to negotiate. BEIRUT, Lebanon — In the final days the outgunned Syrian rebels, deprived of reinforcements, ammunition and sleep, were surviving on olives and canned beans. They were hiding in the concrete shells of destroyed houses and underground tunnels near the besieged rebel stronghold of Qusayr, unable to help their trapped colleagues and civilians dying of treatable wounds, as Syrian government forces and their Hezbollah allies from Lebanon assaulted the town by land and air.
The government’s advance into Qusayr also suggested that the intervention on Mr. Assad’s side by Hezbollah had proved decisive as its fighters besieged, then stormed, a rebel stronghold that the Syrian military had bombarded in vain for months. By Wednesday morning, it was time to flee for the rebel fighters in Qusayr, who had managed to repel the Syrian Army for months but could not withstand the additional attacks from Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite Muslim organization whose leader, Hassan Nasrallah, has made common cause with President Bashar al-Assad of Syria in the two-year-old civil war.
But the intervention also carries big political risks for Hezbollah, a Shiite Muslim organization historically revered in Syria for its opposition to Israel but now seen as a sectarian-driven occupying force by Mr. Assad’s insurgent enemies, who are mostly Sunni Muslims. Hezbollah has said it intervened in Syria to protect neighboring Lebanon from Islamist extremists and defend its ability to strike Israel. In triumphal tones, the Syrian news media announced that Qusayr had been seized, as rebels said they had withdrawn from most of the city but vowed to fight on. Syrian state media broadcast photographs of soldiers raising flags over wrecked buildings as the rebels fled, and the Syrian military was calling the victory a turning point.
The government claimed victory in Qusayr, broadcasting pictures of soldiers raising flags over wrecked buildings as the rebels said they had withdrawn from much of the town. Mr. Assad also received congratulatory messages from his most important regional ally, Iran, which regards Syria as a vital partner. But Mr. Assad was victorious not because his military alone had defeated the rebels. Rather, he appeared to owe the victory to Hezbollah, which provided the crucial infantry power in recent weeks. Hezbollah’s role and the vengeful reactions of its critics have further intensified sectarian divisions in Syria and beyond its borders, creating new risks for both Mr. Assad and Mr. Nasrallah even in their moment of victory.
At the same time, senior American, Russian and United Nations officials convened in Geneva to try to find enough common ground among themselves and the Syrian combatants to hold talks to halt the carnage and work toward a political transition. “We will not forget what Hassan Nasrallah did,” said Abu Zaid, 40, a fighter from Qusayr. “We will take revenge from him and his organization even after 100 years.”
By late afternoon, the sides had failed to agree even on who would attend the conference, and officials said they would adjourn and try again on June 25. Lakhdar Brahimi, the special United Nations representative on Syria, told reporters that “evidently, there is still a lot of work to do.” While taking Qusayr could infuse Mr. Assad’s forces with momentum and embolden him to push for more military advances — just as Russia and the United States are pressing the antagonists in the Syrian conflict to negotiate — the intervention by Hezbollah could reverberate for that organization, which historically has been revered in Syria for its opposition to Israel. Now, in the eyes of the Syrian insurgency and its sympathizers, Hezbollah has turned its guns on fellow Muslims and taken on the form of an occupying force.
With the Syrian opposition’s political leaders disunited and the government defiant, expectations remained low for any talks aimed at halting the conflict, which is more than two years old and has left more than 80,000 people dead. Before and after the insurgency’s defeat in Qusayr, rebels and civilian opponents of Mr. Assad vented rage not only at him but at his allies — particularly Iran and the well-trained Shiite Muslim fighters of Hezbollah, whom they largely blamed for the casualties they had suffered.
The Geneva meeting was also overshadowed by statements from France and Britain over the past day that sarin nerve gas had been used in Syria. The statements confronted American officials with the possibility that Mr. Assad’s government had crossed what President Obama has called a “red line” that could prompt American intervention — an option for which the administration has shown waning enthusiasm. However, a cabinet shuffle on Wednesday appeared to give new prominence to advocates of a more active American role, if not of direct military intervention. Many expressed bitterness toward Mr. Nasrallah, who had exhorted his followers to come to Mr. Assad’s aid against what Mr. Nasrallah portrayed as a jihadist-Israeli conspiracy to topple Mr. Assad and subvert Hezbollah’s ability to attack, or defend against, Israel.
A day after France announced that French laboratory tests had confirmed that sarin gas had been 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. Syrian Sunnis who live in the Qusayr area, near the border with Lebanon, said they felt betrayed by Hezbollah, which they had once exalted because it had helped end Israel’s long occupation of southern Lebanon in 2000.
French and British officials did not make public the details of the evidence on which their assessments were based. The French statements said there was “no doubt” the government or its accomplices were behind the alleged use of the gas in at least one case, based on samples of bodily fluids from victims, including urine samples brought out of Syria by French journalists. British statements were more cautious, saying “the room for doubt” about the use of sarin “continues to diminish” and that the use was “very likely” by the government. Families in Qusayr and surrounding villages say they remember sheltering many Lebanese refugees during Hezbollah’s war with Israel in 2006. Abu Mahmoud, a Syrian insurgent smuggler who said he once helped supply weapons to Hezbollah, said he was now using the same routes to furnish weapons to the insurgents fighting Hezbollah.
In Qusayr, further underscoring the volatility of the conflict, rebels and anti-government activists said their fighters would battle on in surrounding villages and in the northern part of the town, where they are most deeply entrenched. Syria state media acknowledged that the fight was not completely over, saying the military was still sweeping northern Qusayr for militants. One activist, Mohammed al-Qusairi, said Hezbollah was “placing a burden on the shoulders of generations” of Shiites, like the one borne by Germans after their leaders “committed massacres against the Jews.”
Rebels have prepared for more than a year to defend the area, using tunnels and storing food and supplies in underground command rooms that were seen by a reporter who recently visited villages close to the town, including the village of Daba’a. Reuters, quoting a Syrian security official, reported that the military and Hezbollah had left open corridors allowing rebels to withdraw toward Daba’a. The insurgency’s defeat in Qusayr added to an array of Syria developments on Wednesday that suggested the conflict, which has left more than 80,000 people dead, would worsen and widen as it spreads into its third year.
The rebels, who had held Qusayr for more than a year, fought for more than two weeks — longer than expected — against intense assaults by a far larger force and inflicted unaccustomed casualties on Hezbollah’s seasoned fighters, many of whom were honored as martyrs in funeral ceremonies around Lebanon. A meeting convened by American, Russian and United Nations officials in Geneva aimed at finding a way to hold peace talks was adjourned in failure, with no agreement on even who among the Syrian antagonists would attend. Lakhdar Brahimi, the special Syria envoy of the United Nations, said that the officials would hold another meeting June 25 and that “evidently, there is still a lot of work to do.”
But the situation inside Qusayr had grown desperate. Ammunition was running out. Rebel reinforcements were fewer than expected and many were unable to penetrate the government cordon around the city. With medical supplies dwindling, hundreds of wounded people could not be evacuated as Hezbollah fighters assaulted the city backed by heavy government airstrikes and artillery bombardment. Worries about the use of sarin nerve gas in the conflict intensified, as Britain joined France in asserting that the evidence of such use by the government was more persuasive. The statements confronted American officials with the possibility that Mr. Assad had crossed what President Obama has called a “red line” that could prompt a more assertive American intervention.
Rebels said they had managed to evacuate some of the wounded, although there were fears of reprisals against those who remained. In another reflection of concern about a spillover in the war, Jordanian officials said that they had asked the United States for Patriot antimissile batteries and fighter jets to boost their defense abilities in the event of an attack from its northern neighbor. A Pentagon spokesman, Army Col. Steve Warren, confirmed the request and said Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel “will favorably consider it.”
“Yes my brothers, it is one round that we lost,” the Qusayr Coordinating Committee, an antigovernment group inside the town, said in a posting on its Facebook page. “But war is a drawn out competition.” Further underscoring the volatility of the conflict, rebels and antigovernment activists in the Qusayr area said their fighters would battle on in surrounding villages and in the northern part of the town, where they are most deeply entrenched. Syria state news media reported that the fight was not completely over, saying the military was still sweeping northern Qusayr for militants.
Syrian media and military officers portrayed the development as a possible turning point in the conflict. During a recent visit by a reporter, before Qusayr fell, the rebels proudly described the preparations that had allowed their outnumbered force to hold off the assault for longer than expected: tunnels that enabled them to slip in and out of the town; underground command rooms stocked with food, water and drugs; booby traps and mines; even cameras that monitored their attackers.
“He who controls Qusayr controls the center of the country, and he who controls the center of the country controls the whole of Syria,” said Brig. Gen. Yahya Suleiman, speaking to Beirut-based Mayadeen television. “We got this experience from Hezbollah’s tactics against the Israelis,” said Abu Ali, a fighter in Hamediyeh who, like most people interviewed, gave only a nom de guerre for safety. “Today we are using the same tactics against Hezbollah.”
The battle fit a pattern in which rebels hang on until the last minute and then announce a tactical withdrawal. Syrian forces have sometimes been unable to hold reclaimed territory, such as in rebel strongholds in the city of Homs and the Damascus suburbs. Taking a break from leading a band of rebels in the village, he added: “They attack us in our villages and homes, we don’t attack them in their houses. So they will see something they will never forget.”
And if Hezbollah’s fighters try to hold Qusayr — which has taken on a heavy symbolic significance for rebels — they will be in an incongruous role, effectively occupying territory in Syria, a reversal for a group renowned among many Arabs for driving out Israel’s 15-year occupation of southern Lebanon. Even with their bravado, fighters around Qusayr said they felt alone, exhausted and abandoned in the face of a more powerful opponent. Strikingly, some seemed to borrow from Hezbollah ’s history: a sense of dispossession and grievance that they said would be felt for generations.
A Syrian opposition figure said the rebel retreat followed an intervention by the United Nations, which had expressed concern about a humanitarian crisis in Qusayr, especially after the government and Hezbollah fighters had refused to allow Red Crescent humanitarian workers to enter and treat wounded civilians. That feeling is familiar to Shiites, who still mourn the defeat and death of the revered Imam Hussein in a seventh-century battle against what they viewed as the oppressive faction that would become known as Sunnis. In Qusayr, as the rebels saw it, Shiites were the oppressors.
A member of the Syrian National Coalition, the main exile opposition group, said on condition of anonymity that after mediation by the Lebanese politician Walid Jumblatt, United Nations officials relayed a message that Mr. Assad had agreed to allow the wounded to leave on the condition that “armed gangs” leave Qusayr. “The Shiites shout at us that we are the killers of Hussein,” Abu Zeid said. “We will call them the killers of women and children.”
The battle — the largest and most public intervention yet in Syria by Hezbollah — increased tensions throughout the region, pitting Hezbollah against mostly Sunni rebels from Qusayr as well as Sunni jihadists from Lebanon and other countries who had joined the battle. Underscoring the challenge of ever stitching Syria back together, Sunni activists and rebels said other sects, too, were arrayed against them: Alawites, the sect of Syria’s president, Mr. Assad, whom they accuse of attacking Sunni civilians; and other minorities, including Christians, who they say have remained silent on the excesses of the government’s crackdown.
Fighters and civilians around Qusayr used increasingly sectarian language during the battle, vowing revenge on Shiites in general and Hezbollah in particular. Hezbollah-controlled residential areas inside Lebanon were rocketed in attacks attributed to Syrian rebels or their Lebanese Sunni supporters, who also increased their attacks on Alawite supporters of Mr. Assad in the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli. The bigger picture is more complicated. Though it is difficult to gauge events in an area where access has been limited by fighting and government restrictions, sectarian fighting, with attacks by both sides, seemed to begin more than a year ago. Shiite and Christian civilians who, like many Sunnis, have fled to Lebanon, say they too have been attacked and driven from their villages, by Sunnis.
Sunni clerics issued decrees calling on their followers to rush to Qusayr to help, but the call proved more rhetoric than reality. Fighters and activists in Qusayr issued anguished statements of confusion and despair on Wednesday.   The situation inside Qusayr had grown especially desperate in the past few days as the government refused to admit Red Crescent workers until military operations ended.
“What happened to all the fighters who were on their way to Qusayr to support us?” said Ammar, an antigovernment activist who used only his first name for safety. When his makeshift hospital was bombed, Dr. Qassem al-Zein said, he moved his patients to houses and basements, without oxygen, anesthetics, antibiotics or oxygen. There was little to offer more than 1,300 wounded people but the blood that others donated as often as possible, said an activist, Ammar. “Those who are wounded,” he said, “can certainly expect to become martyrs.”
Another activist, Jad al-Yamani, who lost his brother in the battle, said from the outskirts of the city, “Now I lost everything. I cannot return to my town anymore.” Rebels said they had managed to evacuate some of the wounded, although there were fears of reprisals against those who remained. “Yes my brothers, it is one round that we lost,” the Qusayr Coordinating Committee, an antigovernment group inside the town, said in a posting on its Facebook page on Wednesday. “But war is a drawn out competition.”
One man in a video posted by opposition activists said, “We are being exterminated by the Shiites,” and shouted sarcastically, “Let all Arabs be happy and let all Muslims be happy! Qusayr is gone today. So be happy and sing and celebrate!”

Reporting was contributed by Hwaida Saad and Hania Mourtada  from Beirut, Nick Cumming-Bruce from Geneva, an employee of The New York Times from Daba’a, Syria, Alan Cowell from London, Steven Erlanger from Paris, Thom Shanker from Washington, and Rick Gladstone from New York.

Another video showed a well-known opposition activist in Qusayr, Hadi Abdullah, amid a chaotic scene of patients being loaded onto trucks. One man with a gray beard began to cry as he said, “We are dying slowly. Everyone was martyred here and all that’s left is us.”
In the Hezbollah-controlled southern suburbs of Beirut, signs appeared saying “Qusayr falls” as people distributed candy and celebrated.
Some rebels said they were bracing to fight Hezbollah if it pushed on to the northern city of Aleppo — a city even farther outside Hezbollah’s traditional sphere of strategic interest than Qusayr.
Abu al-Haytham, an opposition activist affiliated with a rebel group in Aleppo, said that government forces had flown in Hezbollah and government soldiers by helicopter in recent days to Shiite villages near the city that rebels have been attacking.
Though the claims could not be confirmed, the fact that Syrian rebels considered such an attack a possibility from Hezbollah underscored the surprising turns the conflict has taken in recent weeks.
“I’m going to be honest with you, the battle will be transferred to Lebanon very soon,” Abu Haytham said. " It’s sectarian now.”

Reporting was contributed by Hwaida Saad and Hania Mourtada  from Beirut; Nick Cumming-Bruce from Geneva; an employee of The New York Times from Daba’a, Syria; Alan Cowell from London; Steven Erlanger from Paris; and Rick Gladstone from New York.