More than 60 rebel fighters have been killed in an ambush by the Syrian army, a monitoring group says.
The rebels were killed in a dawn ambush near the town of
Adra, east of Damascus, the pro-opposition Syrian Observatory for Human
Rights said. "At least 62 rebels fell as martyrs, most of them youths," the group said. The state news agency Sana confirmed that "dozens" of rebels
had been killed, and said they were from the al-Qaeda-linked al-Nusra
Front. Sana said the rebels' machine-guns and rocket-propelled grenades were confiscated. More than 100,000 people have been killed in the 28-month
conflict in Syria, with a further 1.7 million Syrians forced to seek
shelter in neighbouring countries, according to UN estimates.Army forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad are still in control of much of Damascus and routes to the west, while the rebels have taken over swathes of the north and east. Ambushed State-run broadcaster Al-Ikhbariya TV showed footage of the dead men, some of whom were in military fatigues. Mohammed Saeed, an activist near Damascus, told the Associated Press that the rebels were walking from the eastern suburbs of Damascus to the area of Qalamoun. "The regime forces riddled them with heavy machine-gun fire," he said. "It seems that the regime discovered the secret road that the rebels were using." On Tuesday rebels captured a key airbase in Aleppo province, near the Turkish border. The Menagh base lies on a major rebel supply route from Turkey. Rebels have also recently taken several villages in Latakia province, the heartland of President Bashar al-Assad's minority Alawite sect. But forces loyal to the president have made recent gains too - in Damascus, Homs, and other areas of Aleppo