Kweiris Airbase is ‘Biggest Achievement’ of Syrian Army in Long Time

“Syrian troops and allied forces have full control of Al-Hader”, a military source reported to AFP.

“This can clearly be seen as an attempt to divide participants”, she said, noting that countries such as Iran, Iraq and Lebanon were not part of the working groups.

The military scheme that so far has proved successful goes as follows: first, Russian airstrikes bomb ISIL-controlled positions destroying their command centers, artillery, tanks, mortar positions and other heavy weaponry, then the Syrian Army and its allies carry out ground offensives, clearing areas of terrorists.

The capture of Al-Hader comes after regime forces entered the Kweyris military base in eastern Aleppo province, which had been under an Islamic State group siege for over a year.

Speaking to ARA News in Aleppo, media activist Khalid Halabi said that pro-Assad forces and allied militias, including Lebanese Hezbollah militia and Iranian groups, have regained the al-Hader town (25 km south of Aleppo city) from rebel fighters.

“Today’s advance is the most important strategic advance for Syrian regime forces since the Russians began their air strikes”, he said.

Al-Hader has been a key goal of a regime offensive south of Aleppo city launched on October 17 with support from Russian war planes.

Aleppo city has been divided between government control in the west and rebel control in the east since shortly after fighting began there in mid-2012.

Syrian government forces broke a siege imposed by the Islamic State group on the northern military air base of Kweiras since 2013.

“Scores of fighters from both conflicting parties have been killed in the battle for the Kweyris air base, where a few 1,000 regime soldiers had been trapped for months”, Halabi told ARA News.

Rebels says the army’s next target was rebel-held Talaat al Eiss, only several kilometres (miles) west of Al Hader.

Aleppo and surrounding areas have changed hands multiple times during the past four years of the Syrian conflict.

According to Rueters, the document does however point out that the reform process should not be chaired by President Assad, but by a candidate agreed upon by all sides and it also calls for UN Special Envoy Staffan de Mistura to launch a political process between the Syrian government and “a united delegation of opposition groups” on the basis of the June 2012 agreement between major powers in Geneva, which calls for the formation of a transitional government for Syria.