Special to WorldTribune.com

NICOSIA — The regime of President Bashar Assad has returned to northern Syria near the border with Turkey.

Assad regime forces have captured a key town near the Turkish border. Military sources said the Syrian Army as well as the National Defense Forces drove Sunni rebels out of Kassab in the Latakia province.

“Scores of terrorist gangs were eliminated,” the Syrian military said on
June 15.

This marked the first Syrian Army success along the Turkish border in
2014. Over the last year, the army focused on defensive operations as
Islamist and other militias captured towns near Turkey.

“It smashes the [rebel] illusions of the aggression and its tools of
securing a marine port and establishing a buffer zone along the borders with
Turkey that forms a base for launching terrorist acts against the Syrian
people,” the military said.

The opposition has acknowledged the loss of Kassab, an Armenian town
located near the only Turkish border crossing in the Latakia province. The
Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported a rebel withdrawal from Kassab,
mostly by Al Qaida’s Nusra Front for the Defense of the Levant.

Syrian Observatory said the Assad regime used the Iranian-sponsored
Hizbullah in the assault of Kassab. The British monitoring group said
Hizbullah, in what appeared to be the longest-range operation in Syria,
seized positions around the border village of Nabain before moving to
Kassab.

The opposition group also reported Syrian Air Force strikes on the
headquarters of Al Qaida’s Islamic State of Iraq and Levant in the north.
The air strikes, the first on a movement long accused of working with the
regime, were reported on ISIL facilities in Raqa and Hasaka.

The Syrian Army also battled rebels in the mountains east of the coastal
city of Latakia. Latakia has been identified as the heart of the Awalite
enclave along the Mediterranean Sea.

  Bashar Assad, Kassab, Latakia, Nusra Front, Syrian forces reclaim key town near Turkish border