Bashar Assad ‘sure of victory’

DAMASCUS: Syrian President Bashar Assad, increasingly confident after his forces inflicted two major defeats on rebels in as many months, said on Thursday that he was “sure of victory.”
Yet hours after he spoke, his forces were hit hard in the still-contested city of Homs when suspected rebel rockets hit an ammunition dump, killing at least 40 people and wounding scores, a monitoring group said.
Assad, speaking to mark Army Day, was also said to have made his first known trip outside of the capital in more than a year, to visit a former rebel bastion nearby now largely in the hands of loyalists.
“If we in Syria were not sure of victory, we would not have had the will to resist nor been able to persevere in the face of more than two years of aggression,” Assad said.
“I have great faith in you and confidence in your ability to... fulfil the national mission that has been assigned to you,” he told troops in his message.
“You have shown rare courage in the battle against terrorism and you have impressed the whole world with your resistance... in one of the most brutal and ferocious wars of modern history,” he said.
State television reported that Assad visited Daraya, a mostly Sunni town neighboring rebel districts south of Damascus, to inspect military units, but did not air any footage.
Assad is known to have traveled outside the capital only four times since the uprising against him erupted in March 2011.
International Crisis Group Syrian specialist Peter Harling downplayed the Thursday trip as a media campaign, arguing that neither of the two sides can claim that victory is at hand.
The trip to Daraya “is nothing more than an impromptu hop to the immediate outskirts of Damascus, which shows the extent to which the conflict has circumscribed the regime’s hold.”
“We have two camps that are continuing to consolidate their positions in distinct areas, but neither of them is able to give any meaning to the notion of victory.”
And he added that “neither one or the other is in a position to convert any military victory into a political victory.”
Meanwhile, senior opposition figure Burhan Ghalioun expressed his disgust at Assad’s remarks.
It is “repulsive that he speaks of victory after he destroyed his country, killed tens of thousands and forced into exile half the population, after a period of two and a half years.”
Assad’s comments came as the army pressed its month-old offensive in Homs — Syria’s third-biggest city — buoyed by its recent retaking of Khaldiyeh.
But at least 40 people were killed and as many as 100 hurt when an ammunition dump belonging to pro-regime militia exploded in the city, apparently after being hit by rebel rocket fire, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
Rockets also crashed into Akruma and Al-Nozha, all districts in southern Homs inhabited mainly by members of Assad’s Alawite community.
A doctor living in Akruma told AFP residential districts were also hit, causing the collapse of apartment blocks.
Khaldiyeh was the second key military triumph for Assad’s forces in less than two months after loyalists recaptured the Homs provincial town of Qusair near the border with Lebanon on June 5.
The army has also been on the offensive in the eastern suburbs of the capital and around the main northern city of Aleppo.
The 28-month conflict has killed more than 100,000 people, according to the United Nations, while UN efforts to convene a Russian- and US-backed peace conference have stalled.

‘FSA cover up'
Prime Minister Wael Al-Halqi said in comments published on Thursday that the government was in favor of a proposed Geneva peace conference but could not sit down with “terrorists.”
“It is not being asked of Syria that it sit down in Geneva with terrorist organizations, classified as such by the UN Security Council,” Halqi was quoted by pro-government daily Al-Watan as saying.
He was alluding to jihadist rebel groups Al-Nusra Front and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, which are blacklisted for their Al-Qaeda links.
Halqi charged that the distinction made by Western and Arab supporters of the opposition between mainstream rebels and the jihadists was a myth given their significance on the battlefield.
“What is known as the Free Syrian Army is just a lie to cover up the actions of these terrorist groups as the majority of its members fight in the ranks of Al-Nusra and Al-Qaeda,” he said.
Halqi said the opposition’s refusal to take part in any peace conference without a prior commitment for Assad to step down showed that it had “chosen the path of rejection and armed struggle against Syrian civilians and the army.”
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