DHAKA: 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, TDS publishes this report on Saturday.

Col Malek al-Kurdi, the deputy head of the Turkey-based Free Syrian Army rebel leadership, told media 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.

Opposition sources said the loss of Safira could help the regime relieve pressure on government forces in the divided city of Aleppo, by sending medical and military supplies there.

BDST: 1717 HRS, NOV 02, 2013
RoR/JCK