BEIRUT: The Syrian army is fighting to cut rebel ground in the southwest in two by seizing an air base near the Jordanian border, an insurgent official said on Thursday, as intensifying air strikes killed dozens of people nearby.
President Bashar al-Assad has sworn to take back every inch of Syria, and recapturing the southwest, one of the first hotbeds of the uprising against him, would leave rebels with only one remaining stronghold, in the northwest.
The area is in a "de-escalation zone" agreed last year by the United States, Jordan and Assad's ally Russia to curb fighting. But despite American warnings that it would respond to an attack, it has not done so and Syrian opposition figures on Wednesday decried Washington's "silence".
Assad's offensive in the southwest has been backed by air strikes and shelling that have killed 93 civilians since June 19, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor said, including 46 on Wednesday and Thursday.
Insurgent territory in the southwest is strung along the borders with Jordan and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, narrowing to only a few kilometers wide at the city of Deraa.