BEIRUT (AP) – The Syrian Army on Friday retook a strategic town on the doorstep of Daraa, a contested southern city that lies between Damascus and the Jordan border, according to activists and the Syrian state news agency.
The conquest of the town of Atman opens up several supply routes to Daraa, which is divided between government and opposition fighters, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported. The Observatory, which relies on a network of activists inside the country, said government troops and allied militias advanced under cover of airstrikes and heavy artillery bombardment.
The state-run SANA agency also reported the victory, saying government forces in Atman scattered the “terrorists” – a term that President Bashar Assad’s government uses to refer to all rebels.
Daraa was the scene of some of the first protests against Assad in 2011 and holds symbolic value in the narrative of the uprising that has since collapsed into a vicious civil war.
The government victory near Dara come as a second government offensive closed in on the northern city of Aleppo, touching off a mass internal exodus of residents fleeing toward the Turkish border for safety.