“Our forces operating in Daraa and Suwayda carried out a redeployment, repositioning, and establishment of a strong and cohesive defense and security cordon after terrorist elements attacked the army’s distant checkpoints,” the state-run SANA news agency cited an army statement as saying.
Local rebel forces took control of over 90 percent of Daraa province, including the entire city, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor, said on Friday. Daraa is where the uprising was sparked in 2011.
A rebel commander in Daraa said on Friday that they had taken over a regime base and seized weapons and aircraft.
“The 52nd Brigade in Daraa was taken over, and we seized aircraft, weapons, and ammunition, we also captured [regime] elements, some of whom are officers,” Kasser Qaddah, a member of the opposition’s southern operations command, told Rudaw.
He claimed that “the majority” of personnel at the checkpoints defected and joined the rebellion.
In Suwayda, the Observatory said that officials of President Bashar al-Assad’s party left their offices as local rebels moved to take control of checkpoints and called the province “out of the regime’s control.”
Syria’s civil war dramatically reignited late last month when a coalition of rebels led by the Islamist Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) launched a blistering offensive against the Syrian army. They quickly took control of the northern city of Aleppo, the largest in the country, and then advanced to capture the strategic central province of Hama.
They are currently at the gates of Homs, another strategic city just south of Hama.
At least 826 people, mostly combatants but also 111 civilians, have been killed since fighting erupted in Syria, according to the Observatory.
The Druze-majority Suwayda province has seen anti-government protests for over a year, driven by a surge in the cost of living.
