Syrian insurgents captured a town on a major highway in the west of the country on Thursday and fought fierce battles with pro-government militias around it, rebels and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said.
The town of Morek is located north of Hama city on a major highway that is crucial to control of western Syria, where the Syrian army backed by allied militia and Russian air strikes has been attempting to wrest back territory from rebels.
Its capture marks a significant blow to the Russian-backed campaign that has also been supported on the ground by Iranian forces. The Russian air force began air strikes in support of President Bashar al-Assad on Sept. 30.
Warplanes believed to be Russian were bombing Morek and its surroundings following the capture, the Observatory said.
“This morning, it was completely liberated,” Fares al-Bayoush, whose rebel group Fursan al-Haq is taking part in the fighting, told Reuters. The group is fighting under the Free Syrian Army banner. A second rebel commander also said the town had been seized.
Bayoush said the town was strategically important. “It was a center for the gathering of regime forces and a point of departure for its operations,” he said.
Government forces fought for months to take control of the town in October 2014 and lost many fighters, the head of the Observatory Rami Abdulrahman said. He said fighting was continuing inside parts of the town.
“They worked hard to retake it last year and now they lost it in a few hours,” he said, adding that insurgents entered the town easily, through government checkpoints, and seized large parts in the west.
Syrian state media made no immediate mention of Morek’s capture.
