Special to WorldTribune.com

NICOSIA — Hizbullah led a special forces operation that captured a
Sunni rebel hub after 17 days of heavy fighting.

Hizbullah sources said about 1,200 special forces troops led the attack
on the rebel-held town of Qusair in May and early June of 2013. They said
the battle marked the most intense campaign of the Iranian-sponsored proxy
in the more than two-year civil war in Syria.

“It was clear that the rebels were well-trained and used the same techniques that we used in the war against the Zionists,” a Hizbullah source said. “We saw evidence of tactics that we taught to Hamas in the Gaza Strip.”

Qusair was captured on June 5 when the last rebels fled the city of 30,000 for Sunni villages near the border with Lebanon. Hizbullah, with casualties of up to 110 fighters, was said to have engaged in the bloodiest battle since the war with Israel in 2006.

“Despite the Syrian crisis and despite political and media pressures, the resistance today is at the highest levels of readiness,” Hizbullah
commander in southern Lebanon Nabil Qaouq said on June 9.

The sources said Hizbullah fighters were backed by aircraft, artillery
and main battle tanks. They said Hizbullah special operations forces,
working with engineering units, sent squads of up to five soldiers for the
slow advance in Qusair. The units conducted house-to-house searches for the
rebels and their Qatari trainers.

Many of the streets of Qusair were ringed with tunnels and bombs, some
of them disguised as garbage or rocks. The sources said Hizbullah would move
only after heavy artillery shelling on a neighborhood.

Hizbullah snipers also supported special operations forces and succeeded
in blocking rebel attacks and preventing supplies from reaching Qusair. They
said the Hizbullah strategy, supported by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard
Corps, was to move from south to northern Qusair.

“It was a difficult environment for us at first because we don’t know
the area,” a Hizbullah operative, identified only as Haj Abbas, told
Lebanon’s Daily Star newspaper. “The buildings are different. The terrain is
different. But we are well-trained soldiers and we are trained to adapt, so
we just got on with it.”

The sources said the capture of Qusair gave Hizbullah valuable
experience in battling the rebels in other parts of Syria. They said
Hizbullah was preparing for a similar assault on Syria’s largest city of
Aleppo, about 40 percent of which was directly controlled by the rebels.

“We think the Aleppo campaign will be much quicker because we now
understand their [rebel] tactics,” the Hizbullah source said.

  Aleppo, captures key rebel hub at Qusair, Hizbullah leads assault, Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Nabil Qaouq, Syria