BEIRUT/MOSCOW: Syrian government forces Friday took control of a key town in the north after several weeks of heavy fighting and a rebel withdrawal.
Syrian state television said government forces had taken full control of the town of Safira, southeast of Aleppo, “after a series of strategic operations.”
“The importance of this new success for our armed forces is due to its strategic importance at the eastern gates of Aleppo,” a spokesman for the Syrian army said in a televised statement.
Col. Malek al-Kurdi, the deputy head of the Turkey-based Free Syrian Army rebel leadership, told The Daily Star that the loss of Safira was “important ... but not the end of the road.”
“It can be recovered; the war is a game of cat and mouse. The [nearby] town of Khanasser has changed hands several times” between government forces and rebels, he said.
Kurdi and opposition sources said that mainstream FSA units, the Ahrar al-Sham Islamist militia and the hard-line Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS) had decided to withdraw from the town.